Vocal Pitch in Motherese

Shute, H. Brenda

doi:10.1080/0144341870070303

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…In fact, previous work even suggests that infants' IDS preference depends on the characteristics of the type of IDS addressed to children their age (McRoberts, McDonough, & Lakusta, 2009). Although this was a relevant concern, previous research had documented some IDS preference in the face of language and age mismatches (McRoberts et al, 2009;Werker, Pegg, & McLeod, 1994), and corpus studies suggested that, if anything, the distinction between IDS and ADS is more salient in NAE than in other linguistic variants (e.g., Fernald et al, 1989;Shute, 1987). Further, although this design did not allow us to disentangle the effects of stimulus language (native vs. nonnative) from the effects of infants' cultural background, we were able to explore how aspects of these factors influence infants' preference for IDS.…”

Section: How Does Ids Preference Vary With Linguistic Experience and mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference

Frank¹,

Alcock²,

Arias‐Trejo³

et al. 2020

Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

159

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Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically important phenomenon and (b) examining methodological, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult in North American English were created using seminaturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using the three common methods for measuring infants’ discrimination (head-turn preference, central fixation, and eye tracking). The overall meta-analytic effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.35, 95% confidence interval = [0.29, 0.42], which was reliably above zero but smaller than the meta-analytic mean computed from previous literature (0.67). The IDS preference was significantly stronger in older children, in those children for whom the stimuli matched their native language and dialect, and in data from labs using the head-turn preference procedure. Together, these findings replicate the IDS preference but suggest that its magnitude is modulated by development, native-language experience, and testing procedure.

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Section: How Does Ids Preference Vary With Linguistic Experience and mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference

Frank¹,

Alcock²,

Arias‐Trejo³

et al. 2020

Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

159

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Tuaycharoen, 1978;Warren-Leubecker & Bohannon, 1984). But as toddlers get older, men stop babytalking to them sooner than women do (e.g., Shute, 1987;Warren-Leubecker & Bohannon, 1984), evidently in response to gender role pressures. This finding suggests that, although the tendency to speak babytalk (viz., to use high, variable pitch) is compelling, it also is perceived as feminine-that is, emotionally expressive and warm.…”

Section: Vocal Intonation and Emotional Connectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Babytalk as a communication of intimate attachment: An initial study in adult romances and friendships

Bombar

Littig

1996

Personal Relationships

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Babytalk is a speech register that has been studied most extensively as it is spoken by mothers to infants, but without attention to its possible role in emotional bonding. We suggest that babytalk plays such a role–that it expresses and facilitates intimate psychological connection, and in a variety of relationships. We first overview relevant literature to show that an association between babytalk and intimate attachment makes sense. Then we report a questionnaire study, which is the first to explore this association as well as the first empirical documentation that babytalk occurs in adult romances and friendships. Self‐reported features and examples of the speech register (as spoken in a particular romance) verified it as babytalk. Individuals who had babytalked to friends or romantic partners tended to be more secure and less avoidant with regard to attachments in general. Within a particular romantic relationship, indicators of intimacy and attachment accounted for about 22% of the variance in babytalk frequency. Partner's babytalking was the strongest predictor, accounting for about 42% of the variance. Communication intentions accompanying babytalk paralleled the hallmarks of attachment, especially affection and play. These and other results suggest that babytalk functions in the process of intimate personal connection.

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“…Although rising contours predominate in infant-directed speech in the stress languages English (Sullivan and Horowitz 1983) and German (Fernald and Simon 1984) falling contours are more prevalent in the tone languages Mandarin (Grieser and Kuhl 1988) and Thai (Tuaycharoen 1978). In a comprehensive review of the literature on pitch in infant-directed speech, Shute (1987) concluded that pitch modifications are not only clearly not universal across languages, but may also differ within one language as a function of sex of the speaker, age of the child addressee, frequency of the speaker's interaction with children and other factors.…”

Section: The Infant's Speech Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Segmentation problems, rhythmic solutions

1994

The Acquisition of the Lexicon

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The lexicon contains discrete entries, which must be located in speech input in order for speech to be understood; but the continuity of speech signals means that lexical access from spoken input involves a segmentation problem for listeners. The speech environment of prelinguistic infants may not provide special information to assist the infant listeners in solving this problem. Mature language users in possession of a lexicon might be thought to be able to avoid explicit segmentation of speech by relying on information from successful lexical access; however, evidence from adult perceptual studies indicates that listeners do use explicit segmentation procedures. These procedures differ across languages and seem to exploit language-specific rhythmic structure. Efficient as these procedures are, they may not have been developed in response to statistical properties of the input, because bilinguals, equally competent in two languages, apparently only possess one rhythmic segmentation procedure. The origin of rhythmic segmentation may therefore lie in the infant's exploitation of rhythm to solve the segmentation problem and gain a first toehold on lexical acquisition. Recent evidence from speech production and perception studies with prelinguistic infants supports the claim that infants are sensitive to rhythmic structure and its relationship to lexical segmentation. * Financial support is acknowledged from the Human Frontier Science Program. Thanks as always to the colleagues with whom the many and varied experiments summarised here were carried out:

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Vocal Pitch in Motherese

Cited by 12 publications

References 41 publications

Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference

Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference

Babytalk as a communication of intimate attachment: An initial study in adult romances and friendships

Segmentation problems, rhythmic solutions

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