The moment‐to‐moment pitch dynamics of child‐directed speech shape toddlers’ attention and learning

Abstract

Successful communication requires attention to people and the complex signals they generate. Adapting attention from one moment to the next allows speakers and listeners to produce and perceive cues in real time and to adjust their responses in ways that facilitate an efficient exchange of information (MacDonald, 2013a, 2013b). In order to break into these dynamics of communication and learn from their caregivers, young children have to process and adapt to the rich, multidimensional information embedded in child-directed speech (CDS; McMurray, 2016; Potter & Lew-Williams, 2019). While it is well-known that young children prefer listening to CDS over adult-directed speech (ADS; Cooper & Aslin, 1990; Fernald & Kuhl, 1987; Werker & McLeod, 1989), less is understood about their processing of and learning from specific features of CDS, such as its characteristically variable prosody, across both shorter and longer timescales. In the current set of studies, we explored how prosodic cues-specifically, the dynamics of pitch-affect young children's inthe-moment engagement with CDS, and in turn, how these differences in attention to pitch contours affect learning of new words. Learning in early childhood occurs in social contexts, and many experiments and theories have prioritized social cues in enabling the development of human cognition (Kuhl, 2007; Tomasello, 1992; Vygotsky, 1978). For example, Kuhl (2007) hypothesized that social interaction facilitates learning by modulating children's attention and arousal during key moments. Brand, Baldwin, and Ashburn

Listeners’ perceptions of the certainty and honesty of a speaker are associated with a common prosodic signature

“…Future research involving pre-verbal infants and nonhuman primates could shed light on this issue. For instance, recent research suggests that toddlers already have biases to focus on similar prosodic markers in child-directed-speech and that this may be associated with better learning 62 .…”

Emotional Voice Intonation: A Communication Code at the Origins of Speech Processing and Word-Meaning Associations?

“…Consistent with these studies, research on auditory emotional words show that, in adults, shifts towards higher F0 mean and F0 variation positively affect perceptual salience of these spoken words, engaging attention, and ultimately, favoring their intelligibility (Davis et al 2017;Dupuis and Pichora-Fuller 2014;Nencheva et al 2020). Numerous studies have addressed this topic focusing on the special speech register that human caregivers use when addressing infants (hereafter infant-directed speech or IDS).…”

Webcams, Songs, and Vocabulary Learning: A Comparison of In-Person and Remote Data Collection as a Way of Moving Forward With Child-Language Research

“…As stated in the introduction, IDS contains melodic features that make it more similar to songs compared to say adult-directed speech (ADS). The methodological decision to use IDS was made given that previous studies that used the IPLP to examine word learning in toddlers have used this type of speech register (Schmale et al, 2011 ; Newman et al, 2018 ), and because IDS has been found to increase attention and guide word learning in toddlers (Nencheva et al, 2021 ). Nevertheless, it is possible that adding a condition in which spoken sentences are produced in ADS might lead to even better accuracy during this type of learning task, and perhaps even lead to a difference in performance with the younger participants.…”