The Role of Verbal Repetition in the Development of Infant Speech Preferences From 4 to 14 Months of Age.

Four experiments investigated infants' preferences for age-appropriate and age-inappropriate infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Two initial experiments showed that 6-, 10-, and 14-month-olds preferred IDS directed toward younger infants, and 4-, 8-, 10-, and 14-month-olds, but not 6-month-olds, preferred IDS directed toward older infants. In Experiment 3. 6-month-olds preferred IDS directed toward older infants when the frequency of repeated utterances matched IDS to younger infants. In Experiment 4, 6-month-olds preferred repeated IDS utterances over the same IDS utterances organized without repetition. Attention to repeated utterances precedes word segmentation and sensitivity to statistical cues in continuous speech, and might play a role in the discovery of these and other aspects of linguistic structure.

[1]  The effect of prosody on young infants' speech perception , 1993 .

[2]  J. Werker,et al.  Preference for infant-directed over adult-directed speech: Evidence from 7-week-old infants , 1992 .

[3]  Peter W. Jusczyk,et al.  Finding and Remembering Words , 1997 .

[4]  A. Fernald.  Four-Month-Old Infants Prefer to Listen to Motherese" , 1985 .

[5]  P. Broen,et al.  The Verbal Environment of the Language-Learning Child. ASHA Monographs, No. 17. , 1972 .

[6]  R. Lickliter,et al.  Intersensory redundancy guides attentional selectivity and perceptual learning in infancy. , 2000, Developmental psychology.

[7]  J. Rondal.  Fathers' and mothers' speech in early language development , 1980, Journal of Child Language.

[8]  K. Kaye,et al.  Why we don't talk ‘baby talk’ to babies , 1980, Journal of Child Language.

[9]  A. Fernald,et al.  Expanded Intonation Contours in Mothers' Speech to Newborns. , 1984 .

[10]  B. Mclaughlin,et al.  Mothers' and fathers' speech to their young children: similar or different? , 1983, Journal of Child Language.

[11]  Erik D. Thiessen,et al.  Infant-Directed Speech Facilitates Word Segmentation. , 2005, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[12]  R. Aslin,et al.  Developmental differences in infant attention to the spectral properties of infant-directed speech. , 1994, Child development.

[13]  Leher Singh,et al.  Infants' Listening Preferences: Baby Talk or Happy Talk? , 2002, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[14]  C. Snow.  Mothers' Speech to Children Learning Language. , 1972 .

[15]  A. Seidl.  Infants’ use and weighting of prosodic cues in clause segmentation , 2007 .

[16]  Peter M. Vishton,et al.  Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. , 1999, Science.

[17]  Anne Fernald,et al.  Peekaboo across Cultures: How Mothers and Infants Play with Voices, Faces, and Expectations , 1993 .

[18]  A. Fernald,et al.  Intonation and communicative intent in mothers' speech to infants: is the melody the message? , 1989, Child development.

[19]  Rochelle S. Newman,et al.  Changes in Preference for Infant-Directed Speech in Low and Moderate Noise by 4.5- to 13-Month-Olds. , 2006, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[20]  Erik D. Thiessen,et al.  When cues collide: use of stress and statistical cues to word boundaries by 7- to 9-month-old infants. , 2003, Developmental psychology.

[21]  Janet F. Werker,et al.  A cross-language investigation of infant preference for infant-directed communication☆ , 1994 .

[22]  Paul Boersma,et al.  Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer , 2002 .

[23]  R. Aslin,et al.  Preference for infant-directed speech in the first month after birth. , 1990, Child development.

[24]  Cynthia L. Miller.  Developmental changes in male/female voice classification by infants , 1983 .

[25]  M. Goldsmith,et al.  Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants , 1996 .

[26]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  The prosodic bootstrapping of phrases: Evidence from prelinguistic infants , 2003 .

[27]  J. Werker,et al.  Infant preference for both male and female infant-directed talk: a developmental study of attentional and affective responsiveness. , 1989, Canadian journal of psychology.

[28]  J. Colombo,et al.  A method for the measurement of infant auditory selectivity , 1981 .

[29]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  Infants′ Detection of the Sound Patterns of Words in Fluent Speech , 1995, Cognitive Psychology.

[30]  C. A. Ferguson.  Baby Talk in Six Languages , 1964 .

[31]  John P. Pinto,et al.  Rapid Gains in Speed of Verbal Processing by Infants in the 2nd Year , 1998 .

[32]  A. Fernald,et al.  A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants , 1989, Journal of Child Language.

[33]  D. Stern,et al.  The prosody of maternal speech: infant age and context related changes , 1983, Journal of Child Language.

[34]  A. Fernald.  The perceptual, affective, and linguistic salience of mothers' speech to infants , 1984 .

[35]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  Six-month-olds' Detection of Clauses Embedded in Continuous Speech: Effects of Prosodic Well-formedness , 2022 .

[36]  P. Kuhl,et al.  Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech , 1987 .

[37]  A. Fernald,et al.  Common themes and cultural variations in Japanese and American mothers' speech to infants. , 1993, Child development.

[38]  Sheila M. Glenn,et al.  What Do Babies Listen to Most? A Developmental Study of Auditory Preferences in Nonhandicapped Infants and Infants With Down's Syndrome , 1983 .

[39]  H. Papoušek,et al.  Didactic adjustments in fathers' and mothers' speech to their 3-month-old infants , 1987 .

[40]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  Some Beginnings of Word Comprehension in 6-Month-Olds , 1999 .

[41]  Daniel Swingley,et al.  Infants' developing competence in recognizing and understanding words in fluent speech , 2001 .

[42]  H. Gleitman,et al.  Mother, Id rather do it myself: Some effects and non-effects of maternal speech style , 1977 .

[43]  B. Friedlander,et al.  The effect of speaker identity, voice inflection, vocabulary, and message redundancy on infants' selection of vocal reinforcement. , 1968, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[44]  S. Glenn,et al.  A study of auditory preferences in nonhandicapped infants and infants with Down's syndrome. , 1981, Child development.

[45]  S Kiritani,et al.  Developmental change in auditory preferences for speech stimuli in Japanese infants. , 2001, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.