Reliability of Listener Judgments of Infant Vocal Imitation

Long, Helen; Oller, D. Kimbrough

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01340

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Furthermore, parents may attend to any unique type of spontaneously produced protophone-irrespective of the communicative intent-and adapt their behavior to promote continued production of that particular sound, creating the appearance of, or perhaps initiating engagement with the infant. Indeed, we have reported evidence suggesting caregivers pay greatest attention to salient vocal signals such as those occurring in imitation, even though vocal imitation is surprisingly rare in the first year [69]. Caregivers, and thus people in general, may be inclined to overestimate the proportion of salient vocal signals such as imitation or immediate responses in protoconversation since it seems likely these are the sounds to which parents attend the most.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 91%

Social and endogenous infant vocalizations

et al. 2020

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Research on infant vocal development has provided notable insights into vocal interaction with caregivers, elucidating growth in foundations for language through parental elicitation and reaction to vocalizations. A role for infant vocalizations produced endogenously, potentially providing raw material for interaction and a basis for growth in the vocal capacity itself, has received less attention. We report that in laboratory recordings of infants and their parents, the bulk of infant speech-like vocalizations, or "protophones", were directed toward no one and instead appeared to be generated endogenously, mostly in exploration of vocal abilities. The tendency to predominantly produce protophones without directing them to others occurred both during periods when parents were instructed to interact with their infants and during periods when parents were occupied with an interviewer, with the infants in the room. The results emphasize the infant as an agent in vocal learning, even when not interacting socially and suggest an enhanced perspective on foundations for vocal language.

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Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 91%

Social and endogenous infant vocalizations

et al. 2020

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“…Without vocal turn-taking, infants would not learn to participate in and contribute to protoconversation ( Gratier and Devouche, 2011 ; Yoo et al, 2018 ). Without infant active participation in protoconversation, using vocalizations with VFF, systematic vocal imitation of new forms would not be possible ( Jones, 2009 ; Long et al, 2019 ). Without these kinds of foundations, words and sentences could never be developed.…”

Section: The Critical Nature Of Vocal Functional Flexibility In Langumentioning

confidence: 99%

Functionally Flexible Signaling and the Origin of Language

Oller

Griebel

2021

Front. Psychol.

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At the earliest break of ancient hominins from their primate relatives in vocal communication, we propose a selection pressure on vocal fitness signaling by hominin infants. Exploratory vocalizations, not tied to expression of distress or immediate need, could have helped persuade parents of the wellness and viability of the infants who produced them. We hypothesize that hominin parents invested more in infants who produced such signals of fitness plentifully, neglecting or abandoning them less often than infants who produced the sounds less frequently. Selection for such exploratory vocalization provided a critically important inclination and capability relevant to language, we reason, because the system that encouraged spontaneous vocalization also made vocalization functionally flexible to an extent that has not been observed in any other animal. Although this vocal flexibility did not by itself create language, it provided an essential foundation upon which language would evolve through a variety of additional steps. In evaluating this speculation, we consider presumable barriers to evolving language that are thought to be implications of Darwinian Theory. It has been claimed that communication always involves sender self-interest and that self-interest leads to deceit, which is countered through clever detection by receivers. The constant battle of senders and receivers has been thought to pose an insuperable challenge to honest communication, which has been viewed as a requirement of language. To make communication honest, it has been proposed that stable signaling requires costly handicaps for the sender, and since language cannot entail high cost, the reasoning has suggested an insurmountable obstacle to the evolution of language. We think this presumed honesty barrier is an illusion that can be revealed by recognition of the fact that language is not inherently honest and in light of the distinction between illocutionary force and semantics. Our paper also considers barriers to the evolution of language (not having to do with honesty) that we think may have actually played important roles in preventing species other than humans from evolving language.

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“…Attempts to experimentally show such imitation are fraught with ambiguities of interpretation as to whether the infant imitates or the parent induces and/or follows the infant's vocal explorations, a kind of following that can yield a false impression of representational imitation on the part of the infant. A systematic attempt to identify auditorily recognizable cases of infant vocal imitation for research on listener judgments of degree of imitativeness yielded no more than a handful of clear cases out of over 6000 utterances drawn from recordings of mother-infant interaction, with fewer than 5% showing any discernible imitation [29]. The cases that did show some discernible imitation included apparent matching of subtle prosodic features subject to notable coder disagreement regarding imitativeness.…”

Section: Background and Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Speech-like sounds dominate the human infant vocal landscape

Oller

Ramsay

Bene

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Early human infant vocalization is viewed as forming not only a critical foundation for vocal learning of language, but also a crucial realm of communication affecting emotional and social development. Although speech-like sounds are rare or absent in other ape infants, they share distress sounds (shrieks and cries) and laughter with humans, forming a potential basis for especially informative cross-species comparisons as well as potential insights regarding usage and learning of vocal sounds. A fundamental need to make such comparisons possible is empirical research to document frequency of occurrence of vocalizations of various types in natural environments.The present work focuses on laughter in the human infant, a topic that has been viewed by many as a key factor in social development for humans and other apes. Yet we know of no research quantifying frequency of occurrence of human infant laughter in natural environments across the first year. In the past two decades it has been shown that the predominant vocalizations of the human infant are “protophones”, the precursor sounds to speech. Longitudinal research has indicated unambiguously that protophones outnumber cries by a factor of at least five based on data from random-sampling of all-day recordings across the whole first year. The present work expands on the prior reports by reporting data showing that human infant laughter occurs even more rarely than cry in all-day recordings. Yet laughter is clearly a salient and important aspect of social development. We reason about the dominance of protophones in the infant vocal landscape in light of their role in illuminating human vocal learning and the origin of language.

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Reliability of Listener Judgments of Infant Vocal Imitation

Cited by 13 publications

References 71 publications

Social and endogenous infant vocalizations

Social and endogenous infant vocalizations

Functionally Flexible Signaling and the Origin of Language

Speech-like sounds dominate the human infant vocal landscape

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