No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Discernible differences in the babbling of infants according to target language
Abstract
Samples of babbling productions of 6-, 8- and 10-month-old infants from different language backgrounds were presented to adult judges whose task was to identify the infants from their own linguistic community. The results show that certain language-specific metaphonological cues render this identification possible when the samples exhibit long and coherent intonation patterns. The segmental indications that are present in the fully syllabic productions of canonical babbling do not allow the judges to identify the infants correctly from their own linguistic community. These results seem to support the hypothesis of an early influence on babbling of the metaphonological characteristics of the target language.
... Specifically, while very young infants readily produce vowels (e.g., "ooo"), squeals (e.g., a high-pitched "eee"), some articulatorily less-demanding, isolated sonorants (e.g., "mmm"), and various other sounds, they do not begin to produce neatly-timed CV or vowel-consonant (VC) syllables until the latter of half of the first year (Oller, 1980). Several studies report that vocal development before 9 months of age, including the emergence of canonical syllables, is language-general and consistent across languages (de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, & Durand, 1984;Vihman, Nakai, & DePaolis, 2006;Whalen, Levitt, & Goldstein, 2007). As a child ages, these works argue that vocalizations become progressively more language-specific and attuned to the unique sounds of the ambient language. ...
... As a child ages, these works argue that vocalizations become progressively more language-specific and attuned to the unique sounds of the ambient language. For example, at 10 months, French-learning infants may produce more nasal segments than English learners, and French infants' stop consonants have different voice onset times from English infants', both of which are attributable to the structure of French (Blake & de Boysson-Bardies, 1992;de Boysson-Bardies et al., 1984). ...
... CBO may be more difficult to determine than CBR because it requires repeated 1 Lee, Jhang, Chen, Relyea, and Oller (2017) point out some methodological concerns of de Boysson- Bardies et al. (1984). These include a lack of annotator blinding to hypotheses, the presence of cues from ambient language, and differences in recording equipment across sites, all of which may have led to erroneous or biased results. ...
This study evaluates whether early vocalizations develop in similar ways in children across diverse cultural contexts. We analyze data from daylong audio recordings of 49 children (1–36 months) from five different language/cultural backgrounds. Citizen scientists annotated these recordings to determine if child vocalizations contained canonical transitions or not (e.g., “ba” vs. “ee”). Results revealed that the proportion of clips reported to contain canonical transitions increased with age. Furthermore, this proportion exceeded 0.15 by around 7 months, replicating and extending previous findings on canonical vocalization development but using data from the natural environments of a culturally and linguistically diverse sample. This work explores how crowdsourcing can be used to annotate corpora, helping establish developmental milestones relevant to multiple languages and cultures. Lower inter‐annotator reliability on the crowdsourcing platform, relative to more traditional in‐lab expert annotators, means that a larger number of unique annotators and/or annotations are required, and that crowdsourcing may not be a suitable method for more fine‐grained annotation decisions. Audio clips used for this project are compiled into a large‐scale infant vocalization corpus that is available for other researchers to use in future work.
... Only few studies, like those of Lee et al. (2008) and , which compared American English and Korean, have systematically compared infants' speech to the adult input speech directed at infants. Moreover, studies by de Boysson- Bardies et al. (1984) and Weir (1966), which postulated a capacity in naïve adults to correctly identify ambient language by listening to babbling of children from different linguistic communities, have been challenged (see Atkinson et al. 1970, Olney and Scholnick 1976, Thevenin et al. 1985. Some of the counterexamples may also be explained by the influence of ambient-language characteristics. ...
... It has also been proposed that learning from input may influence and shape vocalization output preferences in the late babbling and/or first word periods. Researchers have observed the appearance of ambient-language prosodic characteristics in children's prelinguistic utterances (de Boysson-Bardies et al. 1984, Konopczynski 1986, Snow and Stoel-Gammon 1994. In other cases, the appearance of ambient-language influences in production repertoires has been observed in utterance and syllable structures (Levitt and Uttman 1992, de Boysson-Bardies 1993, Kopkalli-Yavuz and Topbaş 2000, in 502 CJL/RCL 63(4), 2018 ...
... terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2018.6 vowel and consonant repertoires (de Boysson- Bardies et al. 1984) as well as in CV co-occurrence preferences (Chen and Kent 2005, Lee et al. 2008. But until now, these empirical investigations of early ambient-language learning have not been able to provide clear evidence of the appearance and timing of ambient-language patterning in young children's spontaneous output. ...
Strong similarities observed between babbling and first words suggest a universal foundation of word production in children. The aim of this work was to evaluate the role of biomechanical constraints on babbling and first words production in two children acquiring Tashlhiyt, a Berber language spoken in Morocco. When considering isolated sounds and syllable types, our data provided evidence for a universal basis for early vocal patterns. The subjects produced more stops, more coronals and labials, vowels preferentially belonging to the lower left part of the vowel space, and open syllables. However, they only partially confirmed the existence of the preferred CV combinations generally observed in the early production of children learning various languages. The comparison between babbling and first words revealed a linguistic continuity between the two periods but also some increasing complexity and diversification in the words, which can be explained by an increase of articulatory capacities.
... Olney and Scholnick (1976) similarly found that adults were unable to identify the language that an infant was learning, in a comparison of two infants, one English and one Chinese. de Boysson-Bardies et al. (1984) used a more robust variety of languages and infant ages and found evidence in favour of language discrimination. In this study, thirty-two samples of babbling were obtained from Arabic, Chinese and French infants at the ages of 6-8and 10 months olds. ...
... Results from our study are consistent with previous findings that adults are able to identify the relative age and primary language of an infant (de Boysson- Bardies et al., 1984;Oller et al., 2001;Olney & Scholnick, 1976;Ramsdell-Hudock et al., 2019), although performance was far from perfect, particularly for the language task. While an adult's ability to identify infants' relative age and their ability to determine the maturity of infants' vocalizations are not identical constructs, this approach allowed us to test participants without any training on linguistic constructs, and is meaningful in assessing the participants' perception of the infant's development based on their vocalizations. ...
Infant language development includes a complex social dynamic between adults and infants. Infant vocalization is a well-studied area of development, however adult perception of infant vocalization is less well-understood. The effectiveness of identifications made by adults may impact the social feedback loops that drive development. We collected data from a final sample of 460 undergraduate students who listened to brief (100-500 ms) audio clips of infant vocalization. Participants were asked to identify infants in the audio clips as male/female, English/non-English, and their approximate age. Participants were unable to determine the sex of the infant better than chance but showed better than chance performance for language and age, albeit with low accuracy. Exploratory follow-up analyses did not reveal an effect of caregiving experience, childcare experience, or participant gender on a participants’ ability to correctly identify the infant’s age, sex, or language. These findings suggest that adult caregivers, regardless of experience, are able to perceive elements of infant vocalizations that may influence responsiveness to infant vocal development. However, performance is far from perfect.
... The prosody is so distinct it does not require specialized equipment to detect. In one study, French parents could sort French and Cantonese babies from only audio recordings of eight-month-old babbling (Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, & Durant, 1984). ...
The current chapter provides a broad introduction to some of the many ways developmental psychology explores inside the minds of infancy. We will examine how the science of Developmental Psychology informs us about what is going on inside the minds of infants. We will examine thoughts and feelings from birth – and occasionally beforehand – through the stage of infancy (from zero to about two years of age), and into toddlerhood, the third year of life. We begin by examining the basic cognitive processes of attention, memory, and learning. Through these basic processes we will see some of the techniques developmental psychologists have devised for studying infants’ thinking. Next, we consider infants’ experience of sensations and their perceptions. Third, we explore infants’ expression of emotion, understanding the emotions of others, and the beginnings of their own self-concepts. Finally, we examine how infants understand abstractions like language and mathematics.
... Infants' babbles gradually take on the sounds, rhythm, and intonation patterns of their home language. French adults, who listened to the babbling of a French 8-month-old and an 8-month-old from either an Arabic-or Cantonese-speaking family, were better than chance at identifying which baby was the French one in each pair (de Boysson- Bardies et al. 1984). ...
... From the age of 6-7 months, pre-linguistic productions are composed of prosodic properties specifi c to the mother tongue. The baby's vocal activity is therefore rapidly infl uenced by the mother tongue, particularly by its rhythmic properties [9,[52][53][54]. Then, from the second half of the fi rst year of life, the child enters the actual babbling phase. ...
The modalities of communication are the sum of the expression dimension (linguistics) and the expressivity dimension (prosody), both being equally important in language communication. The expressivity dimension which comes first in the act of speech, is the basis on which phonemes, syllables, words, grammar, and morphosyntax, i.e., the expression dimension of speech is superimposed. We will review evidence (1) revealing the importance of prosody in language acquisition and (2) showing that prosody triggers the involvement of specific brain areas dedicated to sentences and word-list processing. To support the first point, we will not only rely on experimental psychology studies conducted in newborns and young children but also on neuroimaging studies that have helped to validate these behavioral experiments. Then, neuroimaging data on adults will allow for the conclusion that the expressivity dimension of speech modulates both the right hemisphere prosodic areas and the left hemisphere network in charge of the expression dimension.
... If 15 minutes of laboratory exposure to a vowel is sufficient to influence infants' vocalizations, then listening to the ambient language for 12 weeks certainly provides sufficient exposure to induce change. There is some evidence from the results of babbling studies conducted on infants from different cultures that 1-year-olds in different cultures have begun to be influenced by native-language input (de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart and Durand 1984;de Boysson-Bardies, Halle, Sagart and Durand 1989). The new experimental data demonstrate that even short-term laboratory exposure is sufficient to alter infants' vocal productions. ...
Infants acquire language like clockwork. Whether a baby is born in Stockholm, Tokyo, Zimbabwe or Seattle, at 3 months of age, a typically developing infant will coo. At about 7 months the baby will babble. By their first birthday, infants will have produced their first words, and by 18 months, 2-word combinations. Children of all cultures know enough about language to carry on an intricate conversation by 3 years of age.
... Infants usually produce different linguistic sounds and utterances according to the type of language input they receive (de Boysson- Bardies & Vihman, 1991). These are considered the first attempts of the infant to experiment with sound production and language, and from 8 months to 13 months, they continue to gain control over their vocal communication (de Boysson-Bardies et al., 1984). After babbling, babies begin to relate the sounds or words to objects. ...
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) affects children’s comprehension and production of spoken language without any known biomedical condition. The importance of early identification of DLD is widely acknowledged. Several studies have explored DLD predictors to identify children needing further diagnostic investigation. Most of these measures might be problematic for young children and bilingual children. Based on literature reporting fragile rhythmic abilities in children with DLD, in our study, we followed a different approach. We explored how non-linguistic measures of rhythmic anticipation can be gathered by means of advanced information technology and used to identify children at risk of DLD. With this aim, we developed MARS, a web-based tool to collect such data in a playful way and to analyze them using Machine Learning. MARS engages children in rhythmic babbling exercises, records their vocal productions, and analyzes the recordings. We discuss the methodological rationale of MARS and its underlying technology, and we describe a preliminary study with N = 47 children with and without DLD. The analysis of the audio features of participants’ rhythmic vocal productions highlights different patterns in the two groups. This result, although preliminary, suggests that MARS could be a valuable tool for early DLD assessment.
... In the second stage, individual speech sounds from the native language are learned. While these stages are typically carried out sequentially in model simulations for convenience, the real speech motor learning process is not so discrete (e.g., de Boysson- Bardies, Sagart, & Durand, 1984;Boysson-Bardies, Hallé, Sagart, & Durand, 1989;Mitchell & Kent, 1990) and involves processes not addressed in computer simulations of DIVA. Table 1 provides an overview of these processes, which are detailed in the following paragraphs. ...
This review describes a computational approach for modeling the development of speech motor control in infants. We address the development of two levels of control: articulation of individual speech sounds (defined here as phonemes, syllables, or words for which there is an optimized motor program) and production of sound sequences such as phrases or sentences. We describe the DIVA model of speech motor control and its application to the problem of learning individual sounds in the infant's native language. Then we describe the GODIVA model, an extension of DIVA, and how chunking of frequently produced phoneme sequences is implemented within it.
... Around the same time, it was demonstrated that infant babble reflected the rhythm patterns of the ambient language. Infants listening to Arabic babbled the rhythms of Arabic, whereas infants listening to French babbled the rhythms of French [4]. Babbling follows the rhythmic timing and stress patterns of natural language prosody: it is a specifically linguistic behaviour. ...
All human infants acquire language, but their brains do not know which language/s to prepare for. This observation suggests that there are fundamental components of the speech signal that contribute to building a language system, and fundamental neural processing mechanisms that use these components, which are shared across languages. Equally, disorders of language acquisition are found across all languages, with the most prevalent being developmental language disorder (approx. 7% prevalence), where oral language comprehension and production is atypical, and developmental dyslexia (approx. 7% prevalence), where written language acquisition is atypical. Recent advances in auditory neuroscience, along with advances in modelling the speech signal from an amplitude modulation (AM, intensity or energy change) perspective, have increased our understanding of both language acquisition and these developmental disorders. Speech rhythm patterns turn out to be fundamental to both sensory and neural linguistic processing. The rhythmic routines typical of childcare in many cultures, the parental practice of singing lullabies to infants, and the ubiquitous presence of BabyTalk (infant-directed speech) all enhance the fundamental AM components that contribute to building a linguistic brain.
... Infant babbling development is also thought to progress in a relatively standard order, with babies first producing canonical syllables which may be reduplicated (e.g., "baba"), followed by variegated babbling, or utterances which include two or more consonants (e.g., "bada") [47]. Infants also acquire the ability to produce specific consonants in a relatively standard order across development [56], though language-specific differences in babbling emerge within the first year [5]. It has been suggested that babbling is a training ground for practicing multiple facets of communication: practicing the motor skills required to intentionally produce different sounds [26], practicing the most fundamental linguistic components of one's language [50], and practicing communicative turn-taking "conversation" with others [1,22]. ...
Background
Canonical babbling—producing syllables with a mature consonant, full vowel, and smooth transition—is an important developmental milestone that typically occurs in the first year of life. Some studies indicate delayed or reduced canonical babbling in infants at high familial likelihood for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or who later receive an ASD diagnosis, but evidence is mixed. More refined characterization of babbling in the first year of life in infants with high likelihood for ASD is needed.
Methods
Vocalizations produced at 6 and 12 months by infants (n = 267) taking part in a longitudinal study were coded for canonical and non-canonical syllables. Infants were categorized as low familial likelihood (LL), high familial likelihood diagnosed with ASD at 24 months (HL-ASD) or not diagnosed (HL-Neg). Language delay was assessed based on 24-month expressive and receptive language scores. Canonical babble ratio (CBR) was calculated by dividing the number of canonical syllables by the number of total syllables. Generalized linear (mixed) models were used to assess the relationship between group membership and CBR, controlling for site, sex, and maternal education. Logistic regression was used to assess whether canonical babbling ratios at 6 and 12 months predict 24-month diagnostic outcome.
Results
No diagnostic group differences in CBR were detected at 6 months, but HL-ASD infants produced significantly lower CBR than both the HL-Neg and LL groups at 12 months. HL-Neg infants with language delay also showed reduced CBR at 12 months. Neither 6- nor 12-month CBR was significant predictors of 24-month diagnostic outcome (ASD versus no ASD) in logistic regression.
Limitations
Small numbers of vocalizations produced by infants at 6 months may limit the reliability of CBR estimates. It is not known if results generalize to infants who are not at high familial likelihood, or infants from more diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Conclusions
Lower canonical babbling ratios are apparent by the end of the first year of life in ASD regardless of later language delay, but are also observed for infants with later language delay without ASD. Canonical babbling may lack specificity as an early marker when used on its own.
... Bortolini, 1993;Zmarich & Ferrero, 1999;Zmarich & Miotti, 2003;Zmarich et alii, 2005), età in cui la soglia di inizio delle influenze linguo-specifiche potrebbe già esser stata superata (cfr. de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart & Durand, 1984;de Boysson-Bardies, Hallé, Sagart & Durand, 1989). Saranno esaminate le produzioni di due soggetti di lingua italiana, un maschio e una femmina, entro un arco temporale che va dai 6 ai 18 mesi di vita, cioè dall'emergere nel bambino delle prime produzioni di babbling fino al raggiungimento di un vocabolario di circa 50 parole. ...
1. SOMMARIO Esiste in letteratura un sostanziale accordo sul rapporto di continuità tra babbling e linguaggio adulto e sul fatto che molte delle caratteristiche fonetiche del babbling e delle prime parole abbiano carattere universale. L'emergere dell'influenza linguo-specifica resta invece un aspetto ancora aperto alla verifica sperimentale. Il presente lavoro intende indagare tempi e modalità dello sviluppo dell'influenza linguo-specifica entro un arco temporale che va dai 6 ai 18 mesi di vita, cioè dall'emergere nel bambino delle prime produzioni di babbling fino al raggiungimento di un vocabolario di circa 50 parole. Lo studio consiste in un'analisi segmentale delle produzioni di due soggetti audio-registrati e trascritti a intervalli regolari di 2 mesi. I risultati sono stati analizzati per stadi di età cronologica, in particolare a 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 e 18 mesi. Su tutte le produzioni, preliminarmente distinte in produzioni classificabili come babbling, e in produzioni classificabili come 'parole' (cfr. Vihman & McCune, 1994), sono state effettuate analisi statistiche di tipo descrittivo e inferenziale, allo scopo di rendere conto della frequenza di: tipi sillabici, classi fonologiche di modo e luogo per le consonanti; classi fonologiche di luogo e altezza per le vocali. I risultati sono stati confrontati con quelli ottenuti sul babbling da Boysson-Bardies et alii (1992) e da Vihman (1996), e sulle produzioni di 5 bambini italiani tra i 10 e 18 mesi di vita da Zmarich (2008). Inoltre, è stato effettuato un confronto con l'italiano adulto; in particolare, per quanto riguarda i tipi sillabici, il confronto è avvenuto con i dati riportati in Mancini & Voghera (1994) e, per quanto riguarda l'analisi segmentale, con i risultati di Bortolini et alii (1978). Una possibile influenza delle strutture fonetiche dell'italiano sulle produzioni dei due bambini, si può riscontrare nella prevalenza di vocali medio-alte (per solo uno dei soggetti) e nell'aumento progressivo delle vocali posteriori e delle consonanti velari per entrambi i soggetti. 2. INTRODUZIONE Numerosi sono gli studi condotti negli ultimi anni intorno al babbling, quella fase dello sviluppo linguistico che inizia intorno ai 6-7 mesi di vita e che si caratterizza per la produzione di sequenze di sillabe di tipo consonante-vocale (C-V) dotate di un'organizzazione temporale e ritmica simile a quella del parlato adulto (Vihman,1996). La ricerca sperimentale ha mostrato da una parte che certe caratteristiche fonetiche e fonotattiche del babbling presentano carattere universale, dall'altra che il bambino è già in possesso in questa prima fase dello sviluppo linguistico di un'elevata sensibilità percettiva alla lingua materna (cfr. Curtin & Werker, 2007).
... Bortolini, 1993;Zmarich & Lanni, 1998;Zmarich & Ferrero, 1999;Zmarich & Miotti, 2003;Zmarich et al., 2005), età in cui la soglia d'inizio delle influenze linguospecifiche potrebbe già essere stata superata (cfr. Boysson-Bardies et al., 1984, 1989. Zmarich e Bonifacio (2004: 9) così riassume i principali risultati del lavoro sull'italiano condotto da Zmarich e collaboratori: "per quanto riguarda il modo di produzione, c'è una continuità in termini di tipo di foni prodotti tra stadio prelinguistico e stadio linguistico: in entrambi gli stadi i foni consonantici più frequenti e più stabili sono le occlusive orali e nasali. ...
L'inizio dell'influenza linguo-specifica e le modalità con cui essa si manifesta rappresentano un aspetto dello sviluppo linguistico aperto alla verifica sperimentale, specificamente di tipo inter-linguistico. Perché si possa dire che esiste una influenza linguo-specifica bisogna dimostrare: 1) che le differenze fonetiche tra gruppi linguistici diversi sono maggiori delle differenze all'interno dei gruppi; 2) che queste differenze riflettono i patterns caratteristici di ciascuna lingua (Boysson-Bardies et al., 1992). Al fine di distinguere tra proprietà universali e proprietà linguo-specifiche, una strategia consolidata è quella di quantificare le relazioni tra le strutture fonetiche e le combinazioni fonotattiche presenti nel babbling dei bambini cresciuti in ambienti linguistici diversi e quelle presenti nelle rispettive lingue materne. Tale strategia di ricerca ha portato Vihman & Boysson-Bardies (1994), ad esempio, a individuare un'influenza positiva della lingua nativa già a 9-10 mesi, allorché i foni nativi aumentano, e un'influenza negativa a partire dai 12 mesi circa, allorché i foni non nativi diminuiscono. Per l'italiano non esistono molti dati, e anche quelli esistenti partono purtroppo solo dai 10 mesi: troppo tardi, probabilmente, per individuare l'inizio dell'influenza della lingua nativa. Questo studio è parte di un progetto di ricerca più ampio, su bambini dai sei mesi (inizio del babbling) ai 30 mesi. Si presentano qui i risultati delle prime analisi che sono parte della tesi di dottorato del secondo autore. Il soggetto indagato è una bambina audioregistrata e trascritta foneticamente a 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 e 16 mesi di età. I risultati relativi al calcolo delle frequenze dei diversi tipi sillabici e segmentali in rapporto alla loro posizione entro la sillaba e la parola non saranno qui espressi, come in altre occasioni, in funzione dell'età, bensì in funzione dell'evoluzione lessicale del bambino, e organizzati in tre diversi stadi riconosciuti in letteratura: lo stadio delle 0 parole (da 0 a 3), lo stadio delle 4 parole (da 4 a 14), lo stadio delle 15 parole (da 15 a 24). I risultati potranno così essere direttamente confrontati con i dati interlinguistici presentati in Boysson-Bardies et al. (1992). La marcia di avvicinamento della bambina verso il sistema fonologico dell'italiano sarà valutata tramite un confronto della sua produzione vocale con i dati relativi alle frequenze di occorrenza delle strutture foniche del lessico italiano, tratti da una lista di parole desunte dal Primo vocabolario del bambino (Caselli e Casadio 1995), e da alcuni studi di frequenza disponibili per la lingua italiana. 2. INTRODUZIONE E' opinione largamente accettata che il babbling, cioè la produzione di sequenze di sillabe di tipo consonante-vocale (C-V) dotate di organizzazione ritmica e temporale simile 472
... Given the importance of canonical babbling in the first year of life, the delta-beta PAC reported here may indicate the importance of motor prediction of speech for the language-learning brain ( Arnal et al., 2015 ). Early infant babbling is known to reflect the rhythmic properties of the adult language, as behavioural studies show that the babble of Arabic-, Frenchand Cantonese-learning infants are distinguishably different ( Boysson- Bardies et al., 1984 ). It has also been demonstrated in adult studies that adding more acoustic features (such as spectral features) to the envelope information studied here improves the performance of TRF model ( Di Liberto et al., 2015 ). ...
The amplitude envelope of speech carries crucial low-frequency acoustic information that assists linguistic decoding at multiple time scales. Neurophysiological signals are known to track the amplitude envelope of adult-directed speech (ADS), particularly in the theta-band. Acoustic analysis of infant-directed speech (IDS) has revealed significantly greater modulation energy than ADS in an amplitude-modulation (AM) band centered on ∼2 Hz. Accordingly, cortical tracking of IDS by delta-band neural signals may be key to language acquisition. Speech also contains acoustic information within its higher-frequency bands (beta, gamma). Adult EEG and MEG studies reveal an oscillatory hierarchy, whereby low-frequency (delta, theta) neural phase dynamics temporally organize the amplitude of high-frequency signals (phase amplitude coupling, PAC). Whilst consensus is growing around the role of PAC in the matured adult brain, its role in the development of speech processing is unexplored.
Here, we examined the presence and maturation of low-frequency (<12 Hz) cortical speech tracking in infants by recording EEG longitudinally from 60 participants when aged 4-, 7- and 11- months as they listened to nursery rhymes. After establishing stimulus-related neural signals in delta and theta, cortical tracking at each age was assessed in the delta, theta and alpha [control] bands using a multivariate temporal response function (mTRF) method. Delta-beta, delta-gamma, theta-beta and theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) was also assessed. Significant delta and theta but not alpha tracking was found. Significant PAC was present at all ages, with both delta and theta -driven coupling observed.
... stade, les phonèmes de la langue maternelle sont déjà identifiables : des adultes arrivent à reconnaître le babillage d'un enfant de 8 mois qui appartient à leur communauté linguistique (Boysson-Bardies, 1984). Le babillage contient cependant encore des sons qui ne font pas partie du système phonologique du bébé. ...
Apprendre à lire nécessite de posséder diverses habiletés qui se développent dans la petite enfance et continuent à évoluer lorsque l'enfant entre de manière formelle dans l'écrit. Plusieurs éléments sont déterminants pour l'apprentissage de la lecture, et parmi eux la perception et les habiletés phonologiques jouent un rôle fondamental. Mais que se passe-t-il lorsque l'enfant apprend à lire dans une langue autre que sa langue maternelle, et comment réagir s'il n'arrive pas à entrer dans l'écrit ? Actuellement, en France, il existe peu d'outils pour discriminer les enfants bilingues successifs avec ou sans troubles du langage écrit. Plusieurs questions se posent: qu'est-ce qui est typique et atypique dans le développement langagier des enfants apprenant une langue seconde ? Comment différencier des difficultés transitoires inhérentes à l'appropriation d'une langue seconde de troubles instrumentaux durables ? Cette thèse propose une réflexion sur la structuration phonético-phonologique, la lecture et l’orthographe chez des enfants en situation de bilinguisme successif au développement typique et atypique. Il s'agit d'une étude qualitative à la fois composée d'un échantillon permanent.
... The motherese used with infants eases the acquisition process (Harris, 2013;Nelson et al., 1989). In turn, infants' babbling is also colored by their native language prosody, even before they utter their first sentences (de Boysson-Bardies et al., 1984;Prieto et Esteve-Gibert, 2018). The development of prosody continues until early adolescence (e.g., see Filipe et al. 2017, in Portuguese or Wells et al. 2004. ...
La lecture est un des savoirs fondamentaux acquis à l’école primaire. D’abord centré sur le décodage dans les premières années, l’enseignement se focalise ensuite essentiellement sur la compréhension et l’automatisation de la lecture. Cette automatisation, souvent désignée abusivement par le terme de fluence, est très fréquemment évaluée via une mesure du nombre de mots correctement lus par minute. Or, cette mesure se résume à évaluer le décodage et l’automatisation. Mais a lecture fluente du lecteur expert ne se résume pas seulement à une vitesse de lecture élevée, elle se caractérise également par une prosodie adaptée au texte, notamment en termes de phrasé et d’expressivité. En omettant l’aspect prosodique de la fluence, on tend à entretenir une confusion entre fluence et vitesse de lecture. Les dimensions prosodiques de la fluence ont longtemps été négligées dans l’étude du développement de la lecture. Seules quelques études récentes se sont intéressées à leur développement dans diverses langues, mais il n’en existe aucune en français. Ces études ont pu montrer, d’une part un développement long qui se poursuit au-delà de l’enseignement primaire et d’autre part un lien bidirectionnel entre prosodie en lecture et compréhension écrite. La dimension prosodique de la fluence mérite d’être plus largement étudiée, notamment chez l’apprenti lecteur, et c’est l’objectif de cette thèse.Dans ce travail de thèse, nous avons étudié les étapes de l’acquisition de la prosodie en lecture, ainsi que le lien entre prosodie en lecture et compréhension écrite, chez de jeunes lecteurs français du début de l’école primaire au début de l’enseignement secondaire. Nous abordons ces questions en utilisant trois types de mesures complémentaires de la prosodie : une mesure subjective à l’aide d’une échelle multidimensionnelle et deux mesures objectives que sont les marqueurs acoustiques de phrasé et d’expressivité et une méthode d’évaluation automatique basé sur l’analyse des signaux de parole. Les lectures de 323 enfants du CE1 à la 5ème et d’une vingtaine d’adultes ont été enregistrées, 60 enfants ont été également été suivis du CE1 au CM1. Dans un premier temps, nous avons abordé le développement des compétences prosodiques en lecture d’un point de vue subjectif, en adaptant une échelle anglophone d’évaluation de la prosodie au français. Ces données subjectives ont permis de retrouver le lien prosodie-compréhension en français déjà mis en évidence dans d’autres langues. Dans un deuxième temps, ces données ont été analysées acoustiquement, afin de déterminer les étapes d’acquisition de la planification des pauses et de la respiration, marquant le phrasé pendant la lecture. L’étude des corrélations entre scores subjectifs et marqueurs acoustiques a permis de mettre en évidence les marqueurs affectant le jugement de l’auditeur. Les données acoustiques ont ensuite été utilisées pour mieux comprendre le lien entre prosodie et compréhension. Finalement, nous utilisons un outil de prédiction automatique des scores à l’échelle subjective, utilisant paramètres acoustiques et références multiples. Cet outil est utilisé pour analyser les données longitudinales recueillies auprès de 67 enfants du CE1 au CM1. Ces données ont permis de proposer un modèle de croissance pour chaque dimension de la fluence et étudier les liens de causalité entre automaticité, prosodie et compréhension. Les connaissances acquises dans cette thèse sur le développement de la prosodie en lecture et son lien avec la compréhension écrite chez l’enfant français nous permettent de proposer de nouveaux outils d’évaluation de la fluence incluant la prosodie, et d’envisager le développement d’outils d’entrainement à la lecture prosodique. Ces outils offrent de nouvelles perspectives pour l’enseignement de la lecture ainsi que pour le diagnostic et la prise en charge des enfants en difficulté d’apprentissage de la lecture.
... The phonological similarities between infant vocalizations and early words, differentiated babbling characteristics across languages phonetically and acoustically, and correlations between early vocalizations and later language skills in children with typical development strongly suggest that early vocalizations are continuous with language development (deBoysson-Bardies et al., 1984, 1989McCune & Vihman, 2001;Oller et al., 1976;Vihman et al., 1985;Whitehurst et al., 1991). For example, the sounds produced in babbling often appear in early words, rather than early words including novel speech sounds (McCune & Vihman, 2001;Oller, 2000;Vihman, 2017;Vihman et al., 1985). ...
The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) was designed to measure expressive communication progress in young children. We evaluated using the 6-min ECI procedure for a new purpose-a sampling context for stable measures of vocal development of young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We evaluated how many ECI sessions were required to adequately stabilize estimates of volubility, communicative use, and phonological complexity of vocalizations at two periods (average of 10 months apart). Participants included 83 young children with ASD (M age = 23.33 months). At study initiation, two phonological complexity variables required two sessions; other variables required three. At study endpoint, all variables required fewer sessions. Findings support the feasibility and stability of using the ECI for the new purpose.
... Given the importance of canonical babbling in the first year of life, enhanced delta-beta PAC may indicate the importance of motor prediction of speech for the language-learning brain (44). Early infant babbling is known to reflect the rhythmic properties of the adult language, as behavioural studies show that the babble of Arabic-, French-and Cantonese-learning infants are distinguishably different (45). ...
The amplitude envelope of speech carries crucial low-frequency acoustic information that assists linguistic decoding at multiple time scales. Neurophysiological signals are known to track the amplitude envelope of adult-directed speech (ADS), particularly in the theta-band. Acoustic analysis of infant-directed speech (IDS) has revealed significantly greater modulation energy than ADS in an amplitude-modulation (AM) band centered on ~2 Hz. Accordingly, cortical tracking of IDS by delta-band neural signals may be foregrounded in infancy, and may be key to language acquisition. Speech also contains acoustic information within its higher-frequency bands (beta, gamma). Adult EEG and MEG studies reveal an oscillatory hierarchy, whereby low-frequency (delta, theta) neural phase dynamics temporally organize the amplitude of high-frequency signals (phase amplitude coupling, PAC). Whilst consensus is growing around the role of PAC in the matured adult brain, its role in the development of speech processing is unexplored.
Here, we examined the presence and maturation of low-frequency (<12Hz) cortical speech tracking in infants by recording EEG longitudinally from 60 participants when aged 4-, 7- and 11- months as they listened to nursery rhymes. After establishing stimulus-induced neural signals in delta and theta, cortical tracking at each age was assessed in the delta, theta and alpha [control] bands using a multivariate temporal response function (mTRF) method. Delta-beta, delta-gamma, theta-beta and theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) was also assessed. Significant delta and theta but not alpha tracking was found, the earliest such demonstration for speech. Significant PAC was present at all ages, with stronger delta-driven coupling observed, as hypothesised.
... For example, infants' babbling is initially acoustically similar across different cultures, but over time, the phonemes they produce align with their linguistic community (e.g. Boysson-Bardies, Sagart & Durand, 1984;Lee, Davis & Macneilage, 2010). This process of enculturation occurs across other aspects of language, including the lexicon and syntax (Slobin, 1990;Harkins, Koch & Michel, 1994). ...
How can people achieve successful communication when using novel signs? Previous studies show that iconic signs (i.e. signs that directly resemble their referent) enhance communication success. In this paper, we test if enculturated signs (i.e. signs informed by interlocutors' shared culture) also enhance communication success. Children, who have spent less time in their linguistic community, have less cultural knowledge to inform their sign innovation. A natural prediction is that younger children's signs will be less enculturated, more diverse and less successful compared with older children and adults. We examined sign innovation in children aged between 6 and 12 years (N = 54) and adults (N = 18). Sign enculturation, diversity and iconicity were rated. As predicted, younger children innovated less enculturated and more diverse signs, and communicated less successfully than older children and adults. Sign enculturation and iconicity uniquely contributed to communication success. This is the first study to demonstrate that enculturated signs enhance communication. Media summary: Culture changes how children innovate language. Enculturation leads older children to innovate more adult-like, and more successful, sign systems.
... Adults were able to correctly identify language differences at 6 and 8 months, but not babbling of 10 month olds. According to Boysson-Bardies et al. (1984), this result could be explained by stimuli differences: stimuli from 10 month olds showed "less consistency" in intonation contours. Despite discrepancies in results, where adults were less accurate listening to older infants, these perceptual studies suggest a potential role of prosodic cues in adult listeners' abilities to judge language background of young infants. ...
... For instance, adult listeners are able to discern the differences in vocal productions of 8-and 10-month-old infants acquiring French, Cantonese, and Arabic (de Boysson-Bardies et al., 1984). Additionally, differences in laryngeal articulation has been found in the babbling between infants acquiring English, Bai, and Arabic (Esling, 2012 (Locke, 1983), even when the ambient language does not contain /h/ as a phoneme (Vihman, 1992). ...
While phonological features are often assumed to be innate and universal (Chomsky and Halle, 1968), recent work argues for an alternative view that phonological features are emergent and acquired from linguistic input (e.g., Dresher, 2004; Mielke, 2008; Clements and Ridouane, 2011). This dissertation provides support for the emergent view of phonological features and proposes that the structure of the lexicon is the primary driving force in the emergence of phonological categories. Chapter 2 reviews the relevant developmental and theoretical literature on phonological acquisition and offers a reconsideration of the experimental findings in light of a clear distinction between phonetic and phonological knowledge. Chapter 3 presents a model of phonological category emergence in first language acquisition. In this model, the learner acquires phonological categories through creating lexically meaningful divisions in the acoustic space, and phonological categories adjust or increase in number to accommodate the representational needs of the learner's increasing vocabulary. A computational experiment was run to test the validity of this model using acoustic measurements from the Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus as the input. To provide evidence in support of a lexically based acquisition model, Chapter 4 uses the Providence Corpus to investigate developmental patterns in phonological acquisition. This corpus study shows that lexical contrast, not frequency, contributes to the development of production accuracy on both the word and phoneme levels in 1- to 3-year-old English-learning children. Chapter 5 extends the phonological acquisition model to study the role of lexical frequency and phonetic variation in the initiation and perpetuation of sound change. The results indicate that phonological change is overwhelmingly regular and categorical with little frequency effects. Overall, this dissertation provides substantive evidence for a lexically based account of phonological category emergence.
... From two weeks of age, and possibly earlier than that, positive vocalisations occur most frequently during eye-contact with a caregiver (Keller & Schölmerich, 1987). Crying and cooing precede speech-babble which is seen as continuous with the speech phenomena proper to initial speech (Blake & De Boysson-Bardies, 1992;De Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, & Durand, 1984). The idea of singing acquisition as vocal social learning allows the classification of crying and other vocal utterances as pre-singing as well as pre-speech. ...
... It is clear that there is continuity across these stages of babble, all of which incorporate the essential components of speech production: phonation, articulation, and consonant-vowel combinations [6]. There is also considerable evidence to suggest that continuity continues beyond babbling into speech: babbling patterns are largely consistent with phonological patterns seen in early speech [7]; ambient language elements are identifiable in components of canonical babbling [8,9]; and sounds and syllables produced during the canonical babbling stage often carry over into the child's preferences for first word productions [1,[10][11][12]. Furthermore, infants have been found to produce a higher proportion of favored babble sounds in early words -even in contexts where they do not belong (i.e., interpretable as common childhood phonological errors) -and to omit nonfavored sounds [7]. ...
Purpose:
Several studies have explored relationships between children's early phonological development and later language performance. This literature has included a more recent focus on the potential for early phonological profiles to predict later language outcomes.
Methods:
The present study longitudinally examined the nature of phonetic inventories and syllable structure patterns of 48 typically developing children at 7, 11, and 18 months, and related them to expressive language outcomes at 2 years of age.
Results:
Findings provide evidence that as early as 11 months, phonetic inventory and mean syllable structure level are related to 24-month expressive language outcomes, including mean length of utterance and vocabulary diversity in spontaneous language samples, and parent-reported vocabulary scores. Consonant inventories in particular differed at 11 and 18 months for 2-year-olds with lower versus higher language skills.
Conclusion:
Limited inventories and syllable repertoires may add to risk profiles for later language delays.
... The motherese used with infants eases the acquisition process (Nelson et al., 1989;Harris, 2013). In turn, infants' babbling is also coloured by their native language prosody, even before they utter their first sentences (de Boysson- Bardies et al., 1984;Prieto and Esteve-Gibert, 2018). The development of prosody continues until early adolescence, e.g. ...
The present work reviews the current knowledge of the development of reading prosody, or reading aloud with expression, in young children. Prosody comprises the variables of timing, phrasing, emphasis and intonation that speakers use to convey meaning. We detail the subjective rating scales proposed as a means of assessing performance in young readers and the objective features of each as markers of progress. Finally, we review studies that have explored the intricate relations between automaticity, prosody and comprehension.
... The new motor capacity of canonical babbling brings the infant's vocal production closer to sounding like language, and this, in turn, affects the quality of the input from the infant's "tutors," providing the infant with more directed, language-specific acoustic targets and feedback (Goldstein, King, & West, 2003). As a result, the relative frequencies and acoustic properties of syllables produced by infants gradually shift toward an increased resemblance with the ambient language (De Boysson- Bardies & Vihman, 1991;Sagart & Durand, 1984). ...
Humans and songbirds face a common challenge: acquiring the complex vocal repertoire of their social group. Although humans are thought to be unique in their ability to convey symbolic meaning through speech, speech and birdsong are comparable in their acoustic complexity and the mastery with which the vocalizations of adults are acquired by young individuals. In this review, we focus on recent advances in the study of vocal development in humans and songbirds that shed new light on the emergence of distinct structural levels of vocal behavior and point to new possible parallels between both groups.
... Such findings are in line with similar earlier acoustic investigations (de Boysson- Bardies et al., 1989;Rvachew et al., 2008Rvachew et al., , 2006. Also, the findings of the current study are consistent with other investigations that have reported cross-linguistic differences with respect to different aspects of babbling (e.g., de Boysson- Bardies, Sagart, & Durand, 1984;de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, Halle, & Durand, 1986;Hallé, de Boysson-Bardies, & Vihman, 1991;Lee et al., 2010;Levitt & Utman, 1992;Levitt & Wang, 1991). These cross-linguistic investigations have provided evidence for the interactional hypothesis-the development of infant babbling is influenced by a complex interaction of endogenous and exogenous processes, including the biological development of the vocal tract and language input from the ambient environment (de Boysson- Bardies et al., 1989). ...
This study examined the effects of linguistic environmental input on babbling in cross-linguistic investigations of vowel space. Speech samples were collected from 10- to 18-month-old infants learning Arabic (N = 31). First (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies were identified in the selected vowels and used to calculate the compact-diffuse (F2 − F1) and grave-acute ([F2 + F1]/2) values for each vowel and the size of the vowel space was calculated for each infant’s vowel space. These vowel space statistics were compared to similar data derived from vowels produced by English-learning infants (N = 20) and French-learning infants (N = 23) as previously described in Rvachew, Mattock, Polka, and Menard (2006). It was found that Arabic infants appeared to achieve a larger vowel space at a younger age compared to the English and French infants, which we attribute to the benefit of a less crowded vowel space in Arabic input compared to English and French input. Expansion of the vowel space toward the diffuse and grave corners was common to all three language groups, but the developmental trajectories for the mean F1 and mean F2 varied with language input. These findings suggest that the development of infant babbling is influenced by a complex interaction of endogenous and exogenous processes, which include the biological development of the vocal tract and language input from the ambient environment.
... Only once they start babbling, either canonical or reduplicated, the sounds children make start to be combined in ways that could be conceived of as resembling real words. Research in monolingual infants has shown that the sounds produced during the babbling stage start to resemble aspects of the target sound system during the second half of the first year (Boysson- Bardies & Vihman, 1991;Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, & Durand, 1984;Levitt & Utman, 1992;Whalen, Levitt, & Wang, 1991). These studies showed differences in the distribution of certain phonetic characteristics, such as the use of fewer stops in French infants than in Swedish infants (Boysson-Bardies & Vihman, 1991), the greater proportion of closed syllables in English children as compared to French children (Levitt & Utman, 1992), or the larger proportion of rising than falling intonation in French children as compared to English children (Whalen et al., 1991), reflecting differences in the adult target languages. ...
Many children grow up in a bilingual or multilingual environment. Most of these children will learn to speak their two (or more) languages without any obvious difficulties. Even so, their speech may not be the same as that of children growing up in a monolingual environment. This chapter reviews the literature in the field of bilingual speech production. It will show how simultaneous and sequential bilingual children and adults produce the sound system of their two languages, and will focus on the similarities and differences of their productions with those of monolingual children. It will try to give an insight into the various steps bilingual children go through before developing the sound system of their languages from the preverbal stage towards actual acquisition of segments and prosody. From this review we can conclude that the child’s brain is as able to cope with two (or even more!) sound systems as it is with one. The rate and path of sound acquisition in bilingual children appears to broadly follow that of monolingual acquisition. However, the two language systems of bilingual children tend to interact depending on a number of factors (such as age and manner of acquisition) and this causes slight differences between monolingual and bilingual children in their realisation of speech sounds and prosody in each language. © 2011 Peter Howell, John Van Borsel and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved.
This article describes a neural network model of speech motor skill acquisition and speech production that explains a wide range of data on variability, motor equivalence, coarticulation, and rate effects. Model parameters are learned during a babbling phase. To explain how infants learn language-specific variability limits, speech sound targets take the form of convex regions, rather than points, in orosensory coordinates. Reducing target size for better accuracy during slower speech leads to differential effects for vowels and consonants, as seen in experiments previously used as evidence for separate control processes for the 2 sound types. Anticipatory coarticulation arises when targets are reduced in size on the basis of context; this generalizes the well-known look-ahead model of coarticulation. Computer simulations verify the model's properties.
The study of the phonoprosodic structure of spontaneous speech of infants wearing cochlear implants comprises a fresh attempt to record and analyze premature speech for diagnostic and interventional purposes. This study of prelinguistic speech for typically developing infants and those with cochlear implants is not easy since the traditional linguistic tools of analysis based on adult language cannot be used readily for the accurate description of adult speech. Therefore, the present Thesis proceeds to the analysis of infant speech through acoustical and auditory analysis based on the principles of the infraphonological model of Oller (2000). The innovation of the Thesis lies in the analysis of infant speech of protophones of typically developing infants wearing cochlear implants, contributing both to international and to the substantially lacking Greek bibliography.It is acknowledged nowadays that prosodic fluctuations consist of the basic communication characteristic of the infant, either during perception or production of speech. Consequently, for the present Thesis, it was necessary to analyze the prosodic features of protophones, which dominate during infantile speech. This analysis was performed through the protophone prosodic characteristics of duration and pitch. More specifically, the particular objectives of the Thesis were a) to record the structures of canonical babbling in infants and children of very young age with cochlear implants concerning the syllabic sequence of consonants and vowels, b) to analyze the range of prosodic fluctuations of protophones mainly of canonical babbling, c) to analyze their duration, d) to compare all the above features with a control group of typically developing infants to determine whether the trajectory of the protophone development in children with cochlear implants follows a normal or deviant, peculiar course and finally, e) to present a comparison between infants implanted before or after the 24 months of chronological age since older researches indicated that more benefits emerged from cochlear implantation to the first group rather than the second one.Overall, three typically developing infants (TD) participated, aged 0:8-1:1 and seven infants wearing cochlear implants, with chronological age at the beginning of recordings 1:10-4:0 years and post-implantation age from the beginning until the completion of the study 0:0-1:3 years. The children were selected as candidates to receive a cochlear implant under the criteria of the ENT clinic protocol of the AHEPA University Hospital in Thessaloniki. They were not diagnosed with any other developmental disorder apart from deafness; pre-operatively, the children had PTA 95-110 dB ΗL and did not benefit from using simple acoustic devices. The recordings of spontaneous productions were performed through appropriate equipment in a familiar environment (home), at frequent periods, and through interaction with caregivers. The post-implantation age of infants with cochlear implants was matched with the hearing age of typically developing infants, covering the first year eventually. After data collection, acoustical analysis was performed using appropriate speech analysis software (Praat). Thus, both the duration and pitch differences of protophones were measured. Furthermore, the number of protophones was classified based on the number of syllables of each protophone type via wide-band spectrography aiming to identify the most frequent use of protophone syllabic structure in the Greek language. For the completion and diffusion of the research results, all the rules of anonymity and consent forms of the participants were followed and gathered.Concerning the results, very satisfactory agreement rates among the raters were initially noted. The findings of the present Thesis indicated a) a tendency of infants with cochlear implants to produce isolated vowels of longer duration compared to typically developing peers. This fact was regarded as a weakness for infants with implants since shorter duration comprises a sample of greater maturity of the speaker. In addition, b) the disyllable structure CVCV was found to be the most frequent protophone type of speech over the first year post-operatively, whether the infants received the implant before or after 24 months of chronological age. However, this conclusion aligns with the outcomes for the Greek language through typical development. Also, c) the appearance of the monosyllable structure of CV recorded since the beginning of the first stages of prelinguistic speech in children with cochlear implants. d) There was no significant statistical difference between the mean pitch difference of typically developing infants and the CI1 infants (a group with earlier implantation). This assumption suggests that when cochlear implantation is performed in children younger than two years old, it may be compared with the performance of children with normal hearing. The respective mean pitch difference of the CI2 group was also not significantly different from that of typically developing infants. This result suggests that these infants are destined to adopt linguistic behaviours based on the characteristics of the dominant language. At the same time, maturity-related factors should be considered (chronological age at the beginning of recordings 2:1-4:0 years).In contrast to previous studies based on typical development, which argued for only one syllable type at each stage of prelinguistic speech, the present Thesis e) recorded the simultaneous co-existence of multi-syllable types of protophones. This finding relates to the second half of the first year of development of typically developing infants and to the first post-operative year of infants with CIs.Quantitative classification of protophones with the parallel evaluation of their suprasegmental features through acoustic and auditory analyses provides a new reliable perspective for comparing populations with similar hearing experiences. These comparisons of high diagnostic value can equip us with new linguistic information about disordered speech. In their turn, this information can positively contribute to the formation and design of new evaluation and intervention techniques useful to speech pathology (which have not been developed yet for the Greek language) and audiology.
Every normally developing human infant solves the difficult problem of mapping their native-language phonology, but the neural mechanisms underpinning this behavior remain poorly understood. Here, motor constellation theory, an integrative neurophonological model, is presented, with the goal of explicating this issue. It is assumed that infants’ motor-auditory phonological mapping takes place through infants’ orosensory “reaching” for phonological elements observed in the language-specific ambient phonology, via reference to kinesthetic feedback from motor systems (e.g., articulators), and auditory feedback from resulting speech and speech-like sounds. Attempts are regulated by basal ganglion–cerebellar speech neural circuitry, and successful attempts at reproduction are enforced through dopaminergic signaling. Early in life, the pace of anatomical development constrains mapping such that complete language-specific phonological mapping is prohibited by infants’ undeveloped supralaryngeal vocal tract and undescended larynx; constraints gradually dissolve with age, enabling adult phonology. Where appropriate, reference is made to findings from animal and clinical models. Some implications for future modeling and simulation efforts, as well as clinical settings, are also discussed.
This book draws a new perspective on music as a special form of cognition that provides growing children with the means to mediate their emotional state and attitude to suit their physical and social environment. My conclusions are based on new evidence coming from: 1) musicological analysis of the original and spontaneous vocalizations by children, selected to represent the milestones in the development of music cognition; 2) comprehensive research on "ear development" throughout early childhood, systematically conducted in the USSR/Russia on a large pool of subjects during the 1920-1980s; 3) data on music perception by people habituated to non-Western forms of music, including timbre-oriented music traditions of northeast Eurasia; and 4) research coming from Vygotskian school on sociogenesis and objectivization of musical sound in early childhood (published in Russian only). The principal objective of this book is to arm researchers and students with tools to analyze, interpret, and evaluate the patterns of tonal organization in children musicking - and to inter-relate these patterns to cross-cultural patterns of early verbal, social, and emotional development. Children’s musical cognition needs a thorough revision because of the old erroneous belief, still widespread amongst developmental psychologists, that the principles of Western tonality constitute a universal modus operandi, intuitively sought by children from birth. According to this view, early children’s musicking constitutes a “defective” implementation of adult’s music due to children’s deficiencies in vocal control and its coordination with hearing. In reality, early childhood musicking constitutes a peculiar type of music, different from adult’s music – very much like children’s early speech that follows its own principles, different from adult’s speech. The principles of children’s musicking ought to be inferred from the structural organization of their non-imitative attempts to make music - bottom-to-top (as opposed to the current "a priori" top-to-bottom method of describing children's music in terms of Western tonality). Some other important issues covered in this book are the goals of musical development in childhood, the issues of musical attrition, bimusicality, and normalcy of musical abilities, the modularity of musical hearing, and the relation between musical and real-life emotions.
Infancy researchers often use highly simplified, animated, or otherwise artificial stimuli to study infant’s understanding of abstract concepts including “causality” or even “prosociality”. The use of these simplified stimuli have led to questions about the validity of the resulting empirical findings. Do simplified stimuli effectively communicate abstract concepts to infants? Even if they do, why not use stimuli more like what infants encounter in their everyday lives? Here we make explicit the underlying logic of using simplified stimuli in studies with infants: Simplified stimuli allow for stronger experimental control and therefore more precise inferences compared to more complex, uncontrolled, naturally occurring events. We discuss the inherent tradeoff between measurement validity and ecological validity, offer three strategies for assessing the validity of simplified stimuli, and then apply those strategies to the increasingly common use of simplified stimuli to assess the development of complex social concepts in the infant mind. Ultimately, we conclude that while concerns about the validity of experiments using simplified stimuli are founded, results from such studies should not be dismissed purely on ecological grounds.
Résumé Pour tenter de comprendre les troubles dans le développement, de plus en plus de chercheurs se réfèrent aux procédés d’acquisition du langage. À cet égard, plusieurs travaux ont mis en évidence le rôle fondamental de la prosodie pendant la période préverbale, la prosodie apparaissant comme l’un des composants du langage que l’enfant traite en priorité, à la fois en perception et en production. Observer l’évolution de la prosodie paraît donc être une approche efficace pour déceler à quel moment le système langagier devient incohérent ou à quel moment le développement de l’enfant présente des aspects atypiques. Encore faut-il disposer de critères objectifs permettant de mesurer les dysfonctionnements dans les paramètres vocaux. La recherche de ces critères est aujourd’hui essentielle si l’on veut repérer les troubles le plus tôt possible.
Like singing, speech is governed by a control system that requires sensory information about the effects of its actions, and the major source of this sensory feedback is the auditory system. This chapter addresses a number of issues related to the perceptual control of speech production. The study of postlingually deafened individuals represents the best window onto the role played by auditory feedback in a well‐developed human control system. The chapter reviews what is known about the neural processing of self‐produced sound. This includes work on corollary discharge or efference copy, as well as studies showing cortical suppression during vocalizing. The chapter addresses the topic of vocal learning and the general question about the relationship between speech perception and speech production. One of the key requirements for successful reinforcement learning is exploration. Sampling the control space allows the organism to learn the value of a range of different actions.
The pattern of acquisition of speech- and music-related skills during early stages of human infancy provides insight into the origins of language and music. Indiscriminate until shortly after birth, babies’ vocalizations gradually form acoustic features accompanied by behaviors that make it possible to distinguish attempts to speak from attempts to sing. Comparative analysis of tonal organization of children’s original (non-imitative) vocalizations throughout the first 3 years of life throws light on several important acoustic features. These features play an important role in the separation of music skills from verbal skills and shaping the primordial music system the infant uses to address his/her musical needs. There is evidence that this system is timbre-based, rather than frequency-based, and “personal” – shaped by ongoing communication between mother and infant.
The development of speech and language from infancy to around 4 years of age is a central issue and thus a useful indicator of a child’s overall development. Any impairment in this critical period may negatively affect the child’s future development and affect the verbal cognitive development, the individual’s ability to communicate, school attainment, psychosocial development, vocal well-being and quality of life. Learning language depends on learning grammar (a knowledge- and rule-based system); learning speech depends on learning which sounds are used in a language, involving sound production, perception and organization. Regular speech-language development in monolingual children proceeds in stages with regularities with respect to time and content. Knowledge of these milestones of the typical language development seen in context with cognitive, auditory, motoric, psycho-emotional and general development of a child is a prerequisite to recognizing developmental language delays or disorders. Developmental disorders of speech and language (DDSL) are common diseases. Prevalence numbers are mostly reported from 6 to 8%. They affect boys twice as frequently as girls and all languages a child speaks. For their diagnosis they have to be differentiated from other disorders or functional abnormalities, which may mimic DDSL symptoms, as well as from sociogenically caused language abnormalities.
In diesem Kapitel werden zunächst die wichtigsten Komponenten der Sprache (Semantik, Syntax, Pragmatik und Phonologie) voneinander unterschieden. Im Anschluss wird auf die Entwicklung verschiedener sprachlicher Kompetenzen eingegangen, wobei zunächst die Fähigkeit zur Identifikation sprachlicher Einheiten im Zentrum steht, da die Sprachwahrnehmung der Sprachproduktion vorausgeht. Es folgt die Darstellung der Entwicklung der Sprachproduktionskompetenzen von der Nutzung von Einwortsätzen über die telegrafische Sprache bis hin zur Erwachsenensprache. Abschließend wird auf zwei spezielle Probleme der Sprachentwicklung eingegangen (Aufwachsen in einem bilingualen Kontext und Gehörlosigkeit).
The first description of voice quality production in forty years, this book provides a new framework for its study: The Laryngeal Articulator Model. Informed by instrumental examinations of the laryngeal articulatory mechanism, it revises our understanding of articulatory postures to explain the actions, vibrations and resonances generated in the epilarynx and pharynx. It focuses on the long-term auditory-articulatory component of accent in the languages of the world, explaining how voice quality relates to segmental and syllabic sounds. Phonetic illustrations of phonation types and of laryngeal and oral vocal tract articulatory postures are provided. Extensive video and audio material is available on a companion website. The book presents computational simulations, the laryngeal and voice quality foundations of infant speech acquisition, speech/voice disorders and surgeries that entail compensatory laryngeal articulator adjustment, and an exploration of the role of voice quality in sound change and of the larynx in the evolution of speech. © John H. Esling, Scott R. Moisik, Allison Benner and Lise Crevier-Buchman 2019.
This report is an attempt to formulate the principles of tonal organization of Jaw Harp music based on an overview of available research on the acoustic properties of Jaw Harp music of traditional musical cultures of the indigenous population of Siberia and Russian Far East. The underlying trait of such type of cognition is its orientation on timbral (spectral content of musical sound) rather than pitch (frequency relations between musical sounds) aspects of perception of music - typical for musical cultures of the western part of Eurasia. Accordingly, western Eurasian musical cultures are characterized by the evolution of frequency-based modes towards the crystallization of Western tonality and homophonic type of presentation of musical ideas, based on chordal thinking. In contrary, the northeastern Eurasian cultures’ rely on the development of special timbral modes and textures, most vividly represented in the traditional Jaw Harp music.
Jaw harp has been and remains to be the leading musical instrument for many ethnicities of northeastern Eurasia. Evolution of tonal organization of Jaw Harp music comprises the backbone of the historic development of timbre-based music systems, distinguishing them from tonal organization of frequency-oriented music of Western type, as well as the phonological organization of languages. Phonic symbolism of vowels plays the main role in this distinction that is accompanied by a special organization of spectral texture that makes certain harmonics salient and configures them into harmonic templates. The repertory of such templates functions in a way similar to the phonemes of language - with the only difference that the semantic value of Jaw Harp templates is determined mostly by the onomatopoeic associations of Jaw Harp articulations with the environmental sounds. That is why, Jaw Harp music possesses a unique vocal phonological and semantic system, different from those of singing and speaking, and is dependent on the contrasting oppositions of harmonic templates.
This study investigates the influence of oral training on reading out loud in French as a Foreign Language (FFL). Based on the implicit prosody hypothesis by Fodor (2002), we venture that working on the phonetic correction orally will improve speaking fluency, as well as reading fluency, and facilitate the decoding of the written test. We think that the impact of this training will be stronger with beginner than advanced learners. In order to test these hypotheses, we have conducted two longitudinal studies with English FFL students. We have measured the students’ fluency before and after training. The acoustics and perceptive results of the first study have confirmed our hypothesis and supported our methodology. In the second study, we follow up on these results on a larger-scale longitudinal study, designed to systematically compare the impact of two phonetics teaching methods on reading skills for FFL learners of French: the Articulatory Method (AM) and the Verbo-Tonal Method (VTM). We have also tested one of the presuppositions of the Structuro-Global AudioVisual Methodology (SGAV) – from which comes the VTM – according to which readings and writings activities should be delayed until students’ phonetic and prosodic skills have reached a basic and steady level. Our data support our hypotheses: only the students who have received VTM classes have improved their reading fluency. Furthermore, the introduction of reading activities during the training has caused a decline in all the students fluency. Thus mastering second language prosody is essential before introducing reading or writing activities.
College students judged the relative ages of pairs of vocalizations sampled either from a Chinese infant at 0; 6, 1; 0 and 1; 6 or from an American infant at the same ages. The judgments were 88% accurate, with the easiest judgments contrasting the 0; 6 and 1; 6 samples (96% accurate). With one exception, age contrasts for the Chinese infant were as easy to judge as those for the American infant. However, a second sample of college students was unable to judge the linguistic community of the vocalizer when age was held constant, whether the data were drawn from infant samples of 0; 6, 1; 0 or 1; 6 or from adults babbling to babies. These data led to speculations on the kinds of cues speakers of different languages use to discriminate infant vocalizations, and whether these cues are age-specific or language-specific. The data presently suggest the former, but the present study has methodological limitations, and generalizations are limited to one specific language contrast, English and Chinese.
Previous scholars have claimed that the child's babbling (meaningless speech-like vocalizations) includes a random assortment of the speech sounds found in the languages of the world. Babbled sounds have been claimed to bear no relationship to the sounds of the child's later meaningful speech. The present research disputes the traditional position on babbling by showing that the phonetic content of babbled utterances exhibits many of the same preferences for certain kinds of phonetic elements and sequences that have been found in the production of meaningful speech by children in later stages of language development.
Thesis--University of Chicago. Bibliography: l. 71-76. Photocopy. Chicago, University of Chicago,
In three separate experiments using controlled natural stimuli and a high-amplitude sucking paradigm, infants' ability to detect differences between /s/ and /v/, /s/ and /f/, and /s/ and /z/, respectively, was investigated. Evidence for discrimination was obtained for /s/ versus /v/ and /s/ versus /f/ but not for /s/ versus /z/. Implications for a theory of infant speech perception are discussed.
Discriminiationi of synthetic speech sounds was studied in 1- and 4-month-old infants. The speech sounds varied along an acoustic dimension previously shown to cue phonemic distinctions among the voiced and voiceless stop consonants in adults. Discriminability was measured by an increase in conditioned response rate to a second speech sound after habituation to the first speech sound. Recovery from habituation was greater for a given acoustic difference when the two stimuli were from different adult phonemic categories than when they were from the same category. The discontinuity in discrimination at the region of the adult phonemic boundary was taken as evidence for categorical perception.
Infants from a variety of linguistic backgrounds have been reported to babble similarly. The present study considers this possibility in detail, offering a concrete characterization of how babbling of Spanish- and English-learning babies is similar. Babbling of a group of Spanish- and another of English-learning infants (12 months of age) was recorded and transcribed by two experimenters, one a primarily Spanish speaker and one a primarily English speaker. Results show that in spite of gross phonetic differences between the adult phonologies of Spanish and English, babies from both groups produce predominantly CV syllables with voiceless, unaspirated plosive consonants. Vowel production is also perceived as notably alike. In the light of such similarities, possible differences in babbling of the two groups may be hard for even sophisticated listeners to notice.
The late babbling productions of a French child are analysed and compared with a similar study of English-speaking children. English-speaking and French children are shown to share such universal phonetic preferences as cluster reduction, final devoicing, etc. However, there are also noticeable differences which may be ascribed to corresponding differences in the target language. Thus a selective, language-specific, phonetic acquisition has been taking place during the babbling stage. A comparison of the phonetic repertoires of French, English, Thai and the late babbling corpus confirmed the close similarity between the latter and French. This study reinforces the view that babbling is relevant to the study of linguistic performance.
Noncry, nonlanguage vocalizations were sampled from four female babies between the ages of 7 and 21 months. Three trained listeners' phonetic transcriptions of more than 1,000 vocalizations were compared for interjudge and intrajudge agreement. The amount of agreement varied with the child's age and the criterion of agreement. The tendency toward somewhat greater interjudge agreement in the older than in the younger sampled months was attributed to the possibility that the child's vocal output becomes more speechlike with increasing age. Using an identical segment match criterion, interjudge and intrajudge agreement rarely exceeded 60% of the total number of segment comparisons made at any age. A feature-match criterion applied just to oral stops yielded higher agreement than did the identical segment match criterion. The results underscore the importance of considering listener reliability in assessing the validity of auditory descriptions of early vocal behavior and have implications for the methods used to describe auditory impressions.
Some developmental processes in speech perception. Paper presented at NICHD Conference on Child Phonology - Perception, Production and Deviation
- R N Aslin
- D B Pisoni