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Prosody in speech to children: Prelinguistic and linguistic functions
... Literature underlines four components of language prosodic function: 1) "affect" -liking versus disliking, 2) "turn-end" -understanding questions versus statements, 3) "chunking" -prosodic phrasing, and 4) "focus"-central emphasis on a specific word (Filipe et al., 2017). The first function of motherese is to engage and maintain the newborn's attention (Bozzette, 2008;Eckerman et al.,1994), providing auditory stimuli to which the newborn can respond (Dunbar, 1993;Fernald, 1991). Specific features of motherese are well documented in literature (Fernald & Kuhl, 1987;Cooper et al., 1997;Fernald, 1991;Macwhinney & Snow, 1985;Snow, 1972Snow, , 1977. ...
... The first function of motherese is to engage and maintain the newborn's attention (Bozzette, 2008;Eckerman et al.,1994), providing auditory stimuli to which the newborn can respond (Dunbar, 1993;Fernald, 1991). Specific features of motherese are well documented in literature (Fernald & Kuhl, 1987;Cooper et al., 1997;Fernald, 1991;Macwhinney & Snow, 1985;Snow, 1972Snow, , 1977. Comparatively to adultdirected speech, motherese is typically characterized by exaggerated intonation (high pitch level) and positive affect playing a key role in the infant's vocal responsiveness. ...
... Studies about the pragmatic features of motherese offer relevant contributions for the understanding of language development processes which are compromised in preterm infants. The state of the art highlighted an important role of parental voice on the responsive behavior of preterm infants (Bozzette, 2008;Dunbar, 1993;Eckerman et al.,1994;Fernald, 1991;Filippa et al., 2020), and particularly on their vocal responsiveness (Caskey et al., 2011), as well as in their pre-linguistic development (Caskey et al., 2014). However, it is unclear whether preterm infants are able to extract linguistic regularities of speech. ...
Motherese has been studied particularly in its prosodic features. The scientific literature has underlined the importance of this type of communication on the infants’ vocal responsiveness. However, we still know little about the role of motherese on preterm infants’ vocal responsiveness. We intend to know the prosodic and communicative characteristics of motherese in preterm dyads and particularly to understand its relationship with the preterm infant’s vocal responsiveness. At NICU, mothers (N = 38) were asked to speak and to sing without words (humming) to their preterm infants in kangaroo care during five periods of three minutes alternating voice and silence, controlling the order effect (silence – speech or humming – silence – humming or speech – silence). A microanalytical study about prosodic and communicative/affectionate features of motherese was performed using ELAN, MAXQDA, and PRAAT software. According to results, tonal contours (sinusoidal, U-shaped and falling) and infants’ vocalizations seem to contribute for preterm dyads’ vocal modulation. A high use of phatic and conative functions, interrogative utterances, infants’ positive aspects, infants designated by affectionate words, and utterances connected with infants' needs were observed. This study contributed to explore the role of the communicative/affectionate and prosodic features of the motherese on preterm infants’ vocal responsiveness during the kangaroo care in NICU. Still, more studies are needed to deepen these preliminary results.
... Therefore, to avoid the misattribution of the reflected emotion to the parent, it is proposed (see Gergely, 1995a;Gergely, 1995b;Gergely, 2000) that mothers are instinctually driven to saliently 'mark' their affect-mirroring displays to make them perceptually differentiable from their realistic emotion expressions. Marking is typically achieved by producing an exaggerated version of the parent's realistic emotion expression 7 , similarly to the marked 'as if' manner of emotion display that is 7 Of course, the idea of a separate register or marked communicative code for expressions directed to young children is not novel: it has been described in the realm of verbal communication as 'infant directed speech' or 'motherese' (Ferguson, 1964;Snow, 1972;Fernald, 1991; and it is characterized by phonological and syntactic modifications and prosodic cues such as elevated pitch and exaggerated pitch modulation. While several aspects of the distinctive prosodic patterns of child directed speech have been suggested to facilitate early linguistic development (e. g., by highlighting word boundaries), researchers have also identified a number of primary, prelinguistic functions associated with infant directed speech such as directing the infant's attention, modulating arousal and affect, or communicating emotions and intentions (Fernald, 1991;Stern, Spieker, Barnett, & Mackain, 1983). ...
... Marking is typically achieved by producing an exaggerated version of the parent's realistic emotion expression 7 , similarly to the marked 'as if' manner of emotion display that is 7 Of course, the idea of a separate register or marked communicative code for expressions directed to young children is not novel: it has been described in the realm of verbal communication as 'infant directed speech' or 'motherese' (Ferguson, 1964;Snow, 1972;Fernald, 1991; and it is characterized by phonological and syntactic modifications and prosodic cues such as elevated pitch and exaggerated pitch modulation. While several aspects of the distinctive prosodic patterns of child directed speech have been suggested to facilitate early linguistic development (e. g., by highlighting word boundaries), researchers have also identified a number of primary, prelinguistic functions associated with infant directed speech such as directing the infant's attention, modulating arousal and affect, or communicating emotions and intentions (Fernald, 1991;Stern, Spieker, Barnett, & Mackain, 1983). In fact, there is evidence (Fernald, 1991) for the cross-cultural universality of exaggerated intonation contour in infant directed speech as well as for an innate preference for exaggerated prosody (Cooper and Aslin, 1990). ...
... While several aspects of the distinctive prosodic patterns of child directed speech have been suggested to facilitate early linguistic development (e. g., by highlighting word boundaries), researchers have also identified a number of primary, prelinguistic functions associated with infant directed speech such as directing the infant's attention, modulating arousal and affect, or communicating emotions and intentions (Fernald, 1991;Stern, Spieker, Barnett, & Mackain, 1983). In fact, there is evidence (Fernald, 1991) for the cross-cultural universality of exaggerated intonation contour in infant directed speech as well as for an innate preference for exaggerated prosody (Cooper and Aslin, 1990). Fernald (1992) argues that the exaggerated prosody of infant directed speech is an evolutionary adaptation to the infant's perceptual and physiological system with signal enhancing as well as direct state-modulating properties. ...
... Therefore, to avoid the misattribution of the reflected emotion to the parent, it is proposed (see Gergely, 1995a;Gergely, 1995b;Gergely, 2000) that mothers are instinctually driven to saliently 'mark' their affect-mirroring displays to make them perceptually differentiable from their realistic emotion expressions. Marking is typically achieved by producing an exaggerated version of the parent's realistic emotion expression 7 , similarly to the marked 'as if' manner of emotion display that is 7 Of course, the idea of a separate register or marked communicative code for expressions directed to young children is not novel: it has been described in the realm of verbal communication as 'infant directed speech' or 'motherese' (Ferguson, 1964;Snow, 1972;Fernald, 1991; and it is characterized by phonological and syntactic modifications and prosodic cues such as elevated pitch and exaggerated pitch modulation. While several aspects of the distinctive prosodic patterns of child directed speech have been suggested to facilitate early linguistic development (e. g., by highlighting word boundaries), researchers have also identified a number of primary, prelinguistic functions associated with infant directed speech such as directing the infant's attention, modulating arousal and affect, or communicating emotions and intentions (Fernald, 1991;Stern, Spieker, Barnett, & Mackain, 1983). ...
... Marking is typically achieved by producing an exaggerated version of the parent's realistic emotion expression 7 , similarly to the marked 'as if' manner of emotion display that is 7 Of course, the idea of a separate register or marked communicative code for expressions directed to young children is not novel: it has been described in the realm of verbal communication as 'infant directed speech' or 'motherese' (Ferguson, 1964;Snow, 1972;Fernald, 1991; and it is characterized by phonological and syntactic modifications and prosodic cues such as elevated pitch and exaggerated pitch modulation. While several aspects of the distinctive prosodic patterns of child directed speech have been suggested to facilitate early linguistic development (e. g., by highlighting word boundaries), researchers have also identified a number of primary, prelinguistic functions associated with infant directed speech such as directing the infant's attention, modulating arousal and affect, or communicating emotions and intentions (Fernald, 1991;Stern, Spieker, Barnett, & Mackain, 1983). In fact, there is evidence (Fernald, 1991) for the cross-cultural universality of exaggerated intonation contour in infant directed speech as well as for an innate preference for exaggerated prosody (Cooper and Aslin, 1990). ...
... While several aspects of the distinctive prosodic patterns of child directed speech have been suggested to facilitate early linguistic development (e. g., by highlighting word boundaries), researchers have also identified a number of primary, prelinguistic functions associated with infant directed speech such as directing the infant's attention, modulating arousal and affect, or communicating emotions and intentions (Fernald, 1991;Stern, Spieker, Barnett, & Mackain, 1983). In fact, there is evidence (Fernald, 1991) for the cross-cultural universality of exaggerated intonation contour in infant directed speech as well as for an innate preference for exaggerated prosody (Cooper and Aslin, 1990). Fernald (1992) argues that the exaggerated prosody of infant directed speech is an evolutionary adaptation to the infant's perceptual and physiological system with signal enhancing as well as direct state-modulating properties. ...
... Indeed, there are indications that pitch contour is the most salient musical feature for infant listeners (Trehub, Schellenberg, & Hill, 1997;Trehub, Trainor, & Unyk, 1993). Pitch contour may also be the most salient feature of mothers' speech to prelinguistic infants (Fernald, 1991;Fernald & Kuhl, 1987;Lewis, 1951;Papoušek, 1992). In the case of adult listeners, contour processing seems to be fundamental and relatively impervious to musical experience (Dowling, 1999). ...
... Caregivers across cultures produce distinctive, solo performances of songs for infant listeners (Brakeley, 1950;Trehub & Schellenberg, 1995;Trehub & Trainor, 1998;Tucker, 1984). They also speak to infants in a sing-song manner that incorporates a number of musical features (Dissanayake, 2000;Fernald, 1991Fernald, , 1992. For example, mothers' speech differs from women's usual speech (e.g., pitch level, pitch contours, tempo, rhythm) in ways that reflect greater its emotional expressiveness (Fernald, 1991;Papoušek, 1992;Trainor, Austin, & Desjardins, 2000). ...
... They also speak to infants in a sing-song manner that incorporates a number of musical features (Dissanayake, 2000;Fernald, 1991Fernald, , 1992. For example, mothers' speech differs from women's usual speech (e.g., pitch level, pitch contours, tempo, rhythm) in ways that reflect greater its emotional expressiveness (Fernald, 1991;Papoušek, 1992;Trainor, Austin, & Desjardins, 2000). Infants prefer this maternal speaking style to the usual adult style (Cooper & Aslin, 1990;Fernald, 1985;Werker & McLeod, 1989). ...
... The capacity of recognition of the emotional content of the voice is acquired thus before birth, as the fetus starts learning to decode the maternal voice in utero. After birth, 'babytalk', a particular way of mothers talking to babies -which is preverbal and extremely musical-is used by mothers in order to communicate to their children their emotions and intentions (Fernald, 1991). Numerous studies show the importance of this 'babytalk' or 'motherese' or 'parentese' to the affective bond of mother and child: babies move, vocalize and change their face expressions while listening to 'babytalk' (Castarède, 2001), which is itself a way of talking that is marked by an exagerated prosody, a highpitched voice and a playful tendance with the dynamics of the vocal volume and rythmical regularity (Trehub, 2009). ...
... Numerous studies show the importance of this 'babytalk' or 'motherese' or 'parentese' to the affective bond of mother and child: babies move, vocalize and change their face expressions while listening to 'babytalk' (Castarède, 2001), which is itself a way of talking that is marked by an exagerated prosody, a highpitched voice and a playful tendance with the dynamics of the vocal volume and rythmical regularity (Trehub, 2009). Fernald (Fernald, 1991), who studied precicely this way of vocal adressing to children, describes four stages of development of the 'babytalk', which evolve progressiveley as the baby grows. 'Babytalk' is using the musical parameters of the maternal voice in order to stimulate or to calm the baby, in order to aid emotional emergece and in order to encourage or discourage the child. ...
Philosophy, Arts, Therapies: PATh!
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profound inspiration from the arts.
... La voix maternelle porte les rythmes de la langue natale, déjà avant la naissance, et après la naissance elle traduit les inflexions affectueuses d'un parler-bébé composé de signatures mélodiques uniques et reconnaissables (Bergeson et Trehub, 2007). Les bébés sont en effet tout de suite particulièrement réceptifs aux patterns mélodieux et rythmiques qui caractérisent le « parler-bébé » ou « motherese», c' est-à-dire à la musicalité de la parole animée et empreinte d' émotion positive que les adultes adoptent lorsqu'ils s'adressent à eux (Fernald, 1991). Ainsi, il est plausible de postuler que les étonnantes compétences musicales précoces du bébé sont importantes non seulement pour le développement d'un sens musical, mais aussi - ou même surtout -pour le développement d'une communication sensible qui ne peut pas encore être décrite comme spécifique au langage ou à la musique. ...
... Le parler-bébé peut lui-même être considéré comme une forme musicale de communication qui constitue une pédagogie musicale intuitive (Papousek, 1996). Cette parole présente des caractéristiques musicales comme une variation importante de la hauteur et de l'amplitude des sons, une hauteur moyenne élevée, une régularité rythmique, et la modulation et l' extension des voyelles comme dans le chant (Fernald, 1991). Le parler-bébé possède de plus des caractéristiques harmoniques qui lui prêtent un degré de prévisibilité plus proche de la musique que de la parole ordinaire. ...
... According to Fernald (1991), both Child Directed Speech and singing are characterized by higher pitch levels. Preverbal infants and children are acute in their auditory senses since they acquire the sounds of their L1 through what they hear in their environment. ...
... Tsang and Conrad (2010) report the research conducted by Trainor and Zacharias (1998) of which the result is that the 6 months old infants liked listening to high-pitched over lowpitched versions of the same songs that they used to gather data. Further, they refer to Fernald (1991) and declare that similar results are found with when high-pitched speech is used. ...
This research paper confers the importance of lullabies being sung to children, commencing from the pre-linguistic stage of language acquisition until the end of the first few years of the infancy. Thus, this report deals with the contributory linguistic factors that lullabies bear in triggering the language acquisition of infants apart from the first language cues that they receive and perceive through the speech that the adults use to communicate with them. The intention of this is to determine the whole-scale linguistic significance of lullabies, which are a universally shared experience within the human race. This once again investigates whether lullabies are mere sleep inducing melodies or whether they possess distinctive traits that reinforce language cues to the highly absorbent infant brain. The research was conducted using two methodologies: Questionnaire in Sinhala language was issued to twenty eight mothers, who have children until the age of three years, to provide personal and authentic responses, and a linguistic analysis of a Sinhala lullaby was done using the linguistic knowledge of the researcher. However, there could be different theories regarding this since actual baby brain image in the presence of lullabies was absent in the course of this research. Consequently, the results reveal that lullabies enrich the child linguistic development and thereby suggest the necessity to diverge the linguistic eye on lullabies as a rich resource which evokes and feeds diverse linguistic skills. Lullabies do not reach the heights as parentese do, but they are a rich resource which ensures informal education of an infant’s first language. Hence, this research outlines the value of incorporating lullabies to communicate with children and assertively recommends their usage.
KEYWORDS: enrich, language acquisition, linguistic development, lullabies, speech
... On one hand, common phenomena have been clearly manifested across various types of hyperarticulated speech despite the different experimental settings and languages in focus. Previous studies show overlapped results such as longer segmental durations (i.e., slower speech tempo) (Oviatt et al., 1998;Soltau and Waibel, 2000a,b;Stern et al., 1983); exaggeration of pitch contours; variations of F 0 ; a larger pitch range and higher mean F 0 (e.g., Fernald, 1989Fernald, , 1991Katz et al., 1996;Oviatt et al., 1996;Papoušek, 1992;Trehub et al., 1993); and more rhythmic, musical and stylized intonation (Fernald, 1989;Ladd, 1978;Trainor et al., 1997). Even Chinese-speaking mothers were also found to use higher F 0 and wider pitch range in infant-directed speech (Grieser and Kuhl, 1988), showing a tonal language exhibiting the same patterns of acoustic modification as a non-tonal language such as German (see Kitamura et al., 2001, for similar results in Thai). ...
... Hypothesis 2 predicted more exaggerated pitch contours with a larger pitch range and longer utterance durations in the repetitions irrespective of the speaker groups, because these changes are known as general prosodic modifications in hyperarticulated speech (e.g., Fergzsibm, 1964;Fernald, 1991;Katz et al., 1996; A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T 1998; Papoušek, 1992;Soltau and Waibel, 2000a,b;Stern et al., 1983;Trehub et al., 1993). This hypothesis was also confirmed by PC2 scores for sumimasen and PC1 scores for Entschuldigung. ...
The present study investigates how first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers coordinate lexical and paralinguistic prosody (lexically determined pitch accent and utterance-level intonation) in hyperarticulated speech. Modifications of F0 and segmental durations in repeated utterances were analyzed jointly using a novel method, Functional Principal Component Analysis (FPCA). By testing Japanese and German participants as L1 and as L2 speakers of the respective languages, the task elicited a situation in which L2 speakers had to handle F0 and segmental durations when these prosodic properties mainly carry a paralinguistic function in their L1, but carry a lexical one in their L2 or vice versa. Results show language-dependent and -independent modifications in hyperarticulated speech in both speaker groups. The language-dependent modifications were negatively transferred to the respective L2. The restriction of Japanese lexical pitch accent prevented Japanese participants from phonologically modifying F0 contours in L1 and L2, and German L2 speakers applied the German pitch accent rules in L2 Japanese utterances. Lexical rules outweighed paralinguistic rules in modifying prosody. At the same time, both German and Japanese speakers hyperarticulated the utterances with utterance-final lengthening, larger pitch range and higher peak. Furthermore, we argue that there may be different dominance orders of prosodic properties in Japanese and German according to which prosodic property was more likely to be modified in hyperarticulated speech. L2 speakers were more prone to change a more dominant prosodic property in their L1 to convey a paralinguistic meaning, i.e., segmental durations for Japanese and F0 for German. The findings are particularly noteworthy as the uttered words were highly frequent words of which L2 learners should have had sufficient L2 input before.
... Specifically, they readily retain the melodic contour, or pattern of successive pitch changes (up, down, or level), in a melody but have difficulty retaining exact pitch information (i.e., absolute pitches). Infants' attention to the pitch contours of speech sequences (Fernald, 1991(Fernald, , 1993Fernald & Kuhl, 1987) is a notable linguistic parallel. Infants and adults also show superior processing of melodies whose component tones are related by small-integer ratios rather than large-integer ratios (A. ...
Adults and 9-month-old infants were required to detect mistuned tones in multitone sequences. When 7-tone versions of a common nursery tune were generated from the Western major scale (unequal scale steps) or from an alternative scale (equal steps), infants detected the mistuned tones more accurately in the unequal-step context than in the equal-step context (Experiment 1). Infants and adults were subsequently tested with 1 of 3 ascending–descending scales (15 tones): (a) a potentially familiar scale (major) with unequal steps, (b) an unfamiliar scale with unequal steps, and (c) an unfamiliar scale with equal steps. Infants detected mistuned tones only in the scales with unequal steps (Experiment 2). Adults performed better on the familiar (major) unequal-step scale and equally poorly on both unfamiliar scales (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings are indicative of an inherent processing bias favoring unequal-step scales.
... Tornando allo sviluppo del linguaggio come via di soggettivazione, i lavori di Anne Fernald (1989;1991) nel campo della Infant Research hanno documentato l'intreccio tra pre-linguistico e linguistico, ipotizzando che lo sviluppo delle abilità comunicativo-linguistiche del bambino si installi sulle protoconversazioni e quindi sul carattere sonoro-musicale degli scambi con il caregiver. Le proto-conversazioni sono infatti caratterizzate da un Infant Direct Speech (IDS) in cui risaltano i tratti intonativo-melodici e ritmici della lingua rispetto ai contenuti. ...
In questo lavoro abbiamo inteso coniugare l’approccio psicodinamico con le recenti acquisizioni neuro-scientifiche sullo sviluppo dell’intersoggettività, con attenzione particolare all’area comunicativo-linguistica. Il materiale empirico, raccolto attraverso un’osservazione longitudinale semi-strutturata di un bambino diagnosticato nello spettro autistico, mostra l’intreccio tra i processi intersoggettivi e lo sviluppo della dimensione simbolica nelle diverse modalità espressive in cui si esplicita, rappresentate nel nostro caso dal linguaggio e dal disegno. L’interconnessione dei tre registri - fonetico, linguistico e grafico - ha permesso di identificare l’avvento del linguaggio come produzione intenzionale che segnala la configurazione della soggettività nel campo relazionale.
... Thus, systems of perception undergo a process of adapting to ambient phonological features, beginning even before birth. Phonetically, however, the tuning of systems of speech production to match a native-language phonology represents a monumental task (for a comparative perspective, see Bolhuis, 1991), and the history of the field has seen a range of theories with bearing on the phenomenon, from "innatist" theories assuming a hard-wired cognitive apparatus prepared for learning speech and language (Chomsky, 1986(Chomsky, , 2002, to modern inputfocused theories, assuming development scaffolding through infants' interactions with caretakers (Fernald, 1991;Kuhl et al., 1997;Goldstein and Schwade, 2008) or, more generally, acquisition based on learning from the immediate environment (including parental speech; Kuhl, 2000;Perszyk and Waxman, 2019). Supporting evidence is also available from computational modeling and learning approaches (Vallabha et al., 2007). ...
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.
... In spite of the various cultural differences in music rituals, the appreciation is invariant of cultures, can develop without formal musical training, and has even been argued to be present before linguistic skills are developed (Sridharan et al. 2007;Trehub 2003;Leng and Shaw 1991). Some of infants' first exposures to music are lullabies or other tunes that mothers sing for them (Fernald 1991). Such a form of music has been argued to constitute almost a separate "genre" common throughout cultures with features such as "simple pitch contours, repetition and narrow pitch range" (Trehub 2003, p. 671). ...
According to decades of research in educational psychology, learning is a social process that is enhanced when it happens in contexts that are familiar and relevant. But because of the skyrocketing popularity of data science, today we often work with students coming from an abundance of academic concentrations, professional, and personal backgrounds. How can our teaching account for the existing multiplicity of interests and be inclusive of diverse cultural, socioeconomic, and professional backgrounds? Music is a convenient medium that can engage and include. Enter Playmeans, a novel web application (“app”) that enables students to perform unsupervised learning while exploring music. The flexible user interface lets a student select their favorite artist and acquire, in real time, the corresponding discography in a matter of seconds. The student then interacts with the acquired data by means of visualizing, clustering, and, most importantly, listening to music—all of which are happening within the novel Playmeans app.
... Análogamente, la duración promedio de las sílabas del hdn es más larga (Martínez Pérez, 2013;Martínez Jiménez, 2016;Gorostiza Salazar, 2018), y las sílabas finales de las emisiones son aun más largas que el promedio (Albin & Echols, 1996;Fisher & Tokura, 1996;Soderstrom et al., 2008;Ko & Soderstrom, 2013), lo que tiene como efecto un tempo más lento (Martin et al�, 2016)� En cuanto a los enunciados de la interlocución, la duración de las frases suele ser más corta, y la duración de las pausas, más larga (Grieser & Kuhl, 1988;Fernald et al�, 1989;Farran et al�, 2016)� En el ámbito de los contornos tonales, aparecen recurrentemente contornos de canto i. e., ascenso y descenso en la entonación, relacionados con la expresividad y el afecto (Fernald, 1991;Papoušek & Symmes, 1991;Martínez Pérez, 2013;Santiago Francisco & Figueroa Saavedra, 2019), y algunos patrones de prealineamiento tonal y fraseo en la información focal de los enunciados (Villalobos Pedroza, 2019)� En consonancia con la idea de que cada comunidad lingüística alinea el conjunto de modificaciones que ejecuta en el hdn a las concepciones enero-junio 2022 | ISSN 2549-1852 culturales y sociales sobre la crianza y el desarrollo infantil, al observar con más detenimiento cómo los cuidadores adaptan sus curvas melódicas al dirigirse a los bebés, se ha encontrado que tales modificaciones se ordenan también en función de la edad del bebé y a la intención comunicativa de la vocalización, como atraer su atención, alentarlo, recompensarlo, desaprobar alguna acción, tranquilizarlo, etc (Papoušek et al., 1991). ...
Las experiencias del niño con sus padres juegan un papel clave en el desarrollo infantil. El cuidado parental promueve el desarrollo cognitivo, emocional y social; en contraste, la parentalidad basada en el rechazo, el maltrato y la negligencia está asociada a problemas psicológicos y de comportamiento, así como a dificultades en los futuros procesos de parentalidad. Este artículo tiene el objetivo de informar acerca de algunos de los mecanismos psicológicos y neurobiológicos que incrementan el riesgo de transmisión intergeneracional de la adversidad temprana. Asimismo, se describen algunas intervenciones concretas para el desarrollo del potencial infantil.
... Sung lullabies were chosen for this study, as they are more memorable than other musical genres and instrumental pieces, especially among mothers to babies (Trehub and Unyk, 1991;Weiss et al., 2012). When communicating with infants, adults tend to use exaggerated prosody with elevated melodic pitch and distinct rhythmic patterns (Fernald, 1991). This increased use of singing as well as its function as a means of communication with their babies (see Papoušek et al., 1991;Street et al., 2003) made mothers of small babies suitable for this study. ...
... Actually, language and music have the same base, and they usually complement each other in terms of early learning (McMullen & Saffran, 2004). This is why many language learning programs for kids make use of melody, rhythm and musical speech (Fernald, 1991). Few of the mothers said: ...
Headings • Abstract • Introduction • Objectives of the Study • Research Questions • Methodology • Analyzing Focus Group Data • Conclusion • Recommendations • References Abstract: The study is an attempt to explore the difference between the impact of oral mother goose songs (OMGS) and animated mother goose songs (AMGS) in language acquisition of preschool kids. Two focus groups of fifteen mothers of preschool kids in each are formed. Mothers of the focus group (oral) were advised to sing OMGS for their kids and mothers of the focus group (animated) were asked to show AMGS to their kids. The study concludes that role of OMGS is negative and AMGS is positive in terms of creating phonological awareness. OMGS and AMGS can both play a positive role in enriching the vocabulary of preschool kids if screen time is limited, and parental monitoring is ensured. However, the role of OMGS is positive, and AMGS is negative in enhancing the speaking skills of preschool kids.
... Infant-directed speech can itself be considered a musical form of human communication (Papousek 1996). It is characterized by a number of musical features such as highly vari able pitch and amplitude, elevated pitch, rhythmic regularity, and extension and melodic modulation of vowels (Fernald 1991). Infant-directed speech presents harmonic charac teristics that lend it a predictability that is closer to musical than to linguistic sound (Bergeson and Trehub 2007;Van Puyvelde et al. 2010). ...
This chapter presents a description of musical practices ranging from the earliest forms of musical exploration in infancy to elaborate forms of spontaneous singing in children. It focuses on the biological origins of musical creativity, situating it as a multimodal and em inently social activity. Knowledge of the precocious musical abilities of infants has grown over the past years, but their functions remain obscure. This chapter suggests that a process of musical socialization is initiated in early infancy through social interactions in volving affectionate speaking, singing, and moving of adults. Accordingly, it becomes diffi cult to disentangle the musical and linguistic features that characterize the kind of inven tive sound-play infants and children partake in. The chapter argues, finally, that the dis coveries made by developmental psychologists in this field should set the stage for new pedagogical practices for very young and older music learners.
... Regarding communications between infants and caregivers similar adjustments by social interaction partners (infant-directed speech and infant-directed singing) are made for music and language and infants prefer these forms of infant-directed speech and singing from an early age onward (Masataka, 1999;Trainor, 1996). Similarly, infant-directed speech resembles musical speech to a large degree (Fernald, 1991). This is in accordance with Koelsch and Siebel (2005) notion that the early developing brain processes language as a kind of music. ...
Music and language seem to be associated strongly in the early years of development. We do not know at which time point in development this association weakens. Therefore, this longitudinal study investigated whether singing abilities (song reproduction) are associated with phonological awareness in secondary school children. Furthermore, we tested whether singing ability can predict the development of phonological awareness over a time course of two years in 9- to 12-year-old children. We found that song learning abilities were significantly correlated with phonological awareness scores at all three test waves across the two-year duration of the study. Beyond that, it was possible to predict phonological awareness over time with singing abilities. The model that – in addition to the time of the test wave - only employed song learning abilities and IQ as predictors showed the best fit to the data and represents a parsimonious explanatory model of the development of phonological awareness in 9- to 12-year old children and its relationship with singing ability.
... Hence, there is substantial possible variation in prosody that could be informative for language learning. Fernald (1991), for instance, proposed that this adjustment in pitch and intonation contributed not only to maintaining the child's attention but also in helping to identify words in speech. In fact, recent evidence has shown that infants in In stress-based languages such as English, prosodic stress provides information about word boundaries (Jusczyk, Houston, & Newsome, 1999), as words tend to have initial syllable stress [refer to chapter 2?]. ...
... In the pre-verbal phase, parents often sing to their babies. When communicating with infants, adults tend to use exaggerated prosody with elevated melodic pitch and distinct rhythmic patterns [21]. The increased use of singing as well as its function as a means of communication with their babies [see 22,23] made mothers of small babies suitable for this experiment. ...
... Cependant, dans une revue de la littérature sur la perception de la musique chez les bébés, les adultes et les espèces non humaines, Trehub et Hannon (2006) suggèrent que les capacités perceptives des bébés seraient le produit de mécanismes généraux de traitement de signaux acoustiques qui ne sont pas propres à l'humain ni spécifiques à la musique. Par exemple, les notes descendantes et l'allongement de la durée jouent un rôle important dans la segmentation des mots et sont particulièrement exagérés dans le langage destiné aux bébés (Fernald, 1991). La perception rythmique du langage serait également un critère de segmentation de la parole (Ramus et al., 1999) et est prise en compte lors de discrimination de différentes langues (Nazzi et al., 1998). ...
... Sentence stress (prosodic prominence) expresses the status of a word as new to the discourse (so-called broad or informational focus), or as having contrastive or narrow-scope focus (boy PAINTS a boat versus BOY paints a boat) (for a review, see Cole 2015). Parents typically speak to infants with an infantdirected style where they use much pitch variation, use high pitch and long segment durations, and in particular stress new or important words in sentences with these acoustic variations (Fernald 1991). This is thought to facilitate NH children's word learning by enhancing the recognition of new word forms and their phonological representations (the role of infant-directed speech in general: Thiessen et al. 2005;Singh et al. 2009;Estes & Hurley 2013; particularly sentence stress, Männel & Friederici 2013). ...
Objectives: A major issue in the rehabilitation of children with cochlear implants (CIs) is unexplained variance in their language skills, where many of them lag behind children with normal hearing (NH). Here, we assess links between generative language skills and the perception of prosodic stress, and with musical and parental activities in children with CIs and NH. Understanding these links is expected to guide future research and toward supporting language development in children with a CI. Design: Twenty-one unilaterally and early-implanted children and 31 children with NH, aged 5 to 13, were classified as musically active or non-active by a questionnaire recording regularity of musical activities, in particular singing, and reading and other activities shared with parents. Perception of word and sentence stress, performance in word finding, verbal intelligence (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) vocabulary), and phonological awareness (production of rhymes) were measured in all children. Comparisons between children with a CI and NH were made against a subset of 21 of the children with NH who were matched to children with CIs by age, gender, socioeconomic background, and musical activity. Regression analyses, run separately for children with CIs and NH, assessed how much variance in each language task was shared with each of prosodic perception, the child's own music activity, and activities with parents, including singing and reading. All statistical analyses were conducted both with and without control for age and maternal education. Results: Musically active children with CIs performed similarly to NH controls in all language tasks, while those who were not musically active performed more poorly. Only musically nonactive children with CIs made more phonological and semantic errors in word finding than NH controls , and word finding correlated with other language skills. Regression analysis results for word finding and VIQ were similar for children with CIs and NH. These language skills shared considerable variance with the perception of prosodic stress and musical activities. When age and maternal education were controlled for, strong links remained between perception of prosodic stress and VIQ (shared variance: CI, 32%/NH, 16%) and between musical activities and word finding (shared variance: CI, 53%/NH, 20%). Links were always stronger for children with CIs, for whom better phonological awareness was also linked to improved stress perception and more musical activity, and parental activities altogether shared significantly variance with word finding and VIQ. Conclusions: For children with CIs and NH, better perception of prosodic stress and musical activities with singing are associated with improved generative language skills. In addition, for children with CIs, parental singing has a stronger positive association to word finding and VIQ than parental reading. These results cannot address causality, but they suggest that good perception of prosodic stress, musical activities involving singing, and parental singing and reading may all be beneficial for word finding and other generative language skills in implanted children.
... Over the course of the first year of life, infant attraction to what is prosodically salient in a given language further shapes the child's emergent representations of speech. For example, Fernald (1991) described the effects on language development of prosodic modulation in infant-directed speech; Jusczyk (1993Jusczyk ( , 1997) modelled advances over the first year in the grouping of prominent acoustic features such as syllables with higher or more dynamic pitch pattern or longer duration. ...
This chapter presents data from four to eight children each learning one of six languages, British English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Italian, and Welsh. As a basis for cross-linguistic comparison the chapter first considers similarities and differences in the target forms of the first words of these children. It then presents the children’s later prosodic structures, including American English in the comparison. The chapter considers the development changes apparent from comparing the first words with the later structures and quantifies the extent of variegation in first word targets and later child word forms. In concluding, it is found that common resources are strongly in evidence in the first words but by the later point there is good evidence of ambient language influence as well as of individual differences within the groups.
... Young infants are often spoken to by carers using modified speech patterns; this type of speech is referred to as "Infant Directed Speech (IDS)" (also called motherese or parentese). IDS is characterised by exaggerated prosody, raised voice fundamental frequency, expanded pitch contours, larger dynamic range and rhythmic regularity (Clark 2009;Fernald 1991). A number of early studies have investigated infant's reactions to IDS by observing infant gaze patterns to loudspeakers playing both IDS and conventional adult speech (Cooper and Aslin 1990;Fernald 1985;Werker and McLeod 1989). ...
Children with cochlear hearing loss are offered a range of intervention devices to manage their hearing impairment. The most common devices fitted are hearing aids, cochlear implants or a combination of both (bimodal stimulation with a cochlear implant on one ear and hearing aid on the other). The main goal of these devices is to improve listening and communication for speech and language development. However in more recent years additional focus has been given to non-speech sounds such as music. Pitch is an important aspect of music because it carries the melody; however it is represented differently by the different devices used. The impact this has on children’s musical ability is not fully understood. This thesis explores this area and aims to determine if groups of hearing impaired children who use different intervention devices have a differential impact on pitch perception, singing and general musical ability. The primary research question addressed within the thesis was, do differences exist between different groups of hearing-impaired children who use different amplification devices for general musical ability, pitch perception and singing ability?.Fifty seven children aged between 4 and 9 years old (15 Cochlear implantees, 21 hearing aid users, 8 children with bimodal stimulation and 13 normally hearing children) were assessed for pitch perception and singing while their parents completed a questionnaire on their general musical ability. Results indicated that children using purely electrical stimulation (bilateral cochlear implants) performed more poorly for pitch perception, than children using acoustic information either through bilateral hearing aids or bimodal stimulation. This result was not demonstrated for singing competency, however a reduced comfortable singing range and greater voice irregularity was observed for the cochlear implantees when singing. Normally hearing children performed better with respect to pitch perception and singing competency but did not show a significantly better score for musical enjoyment or involvement in comparison to all three hearing impaired groups. The results indicate that the bimodal configuration could provide some benefits for pitch perception for hearing-impaired children that have useable residual hearing. This doesn’t however extend to pitch production in terms of singing competency. The findings derived from this research study are important not only to build on current research literature but also to inform future clinical practice.
... Most of the work on musical aspects of vocal pitch describes it in terms of melodic contour (Fernald, 1989(Fernald, , 1991Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009;Stern, Spieker, & MacKain, 1982;Trehub, Trainor, & Unyk, 1993). A limitation of this type of analysis, however, is that it describes pitch behaviour in a rather global way -in terms of, for example, "rising", "lower" contours -overlooking more precise relations between frequencies. ...
... Após esclarecimentos a respeito da duração, objetivos e procedimentos da pesquisa, as Esses achados corroboram a literatura, em relação às diferentes funções assumidas pela fala dirigida à criança, referidas por autores como Fernald (1991) e Jakobson (1995. ...
A fala dirigida ao bebê, ou manhês, possui padrões prosódicos específicos que convocam o bebê à interação e contribuem para a entrada do bebê no universo da linguagem. Diante dessa perspectiva, esse estudo quantitativo e qualitativo, transversal, teve por objetivos investigar a relação entre os padrões prosódicos da fala materna e a constituição do processo interativo mãe-bebê, assim como discutir a importância dessa experiência precoce da criança no seu processo de aquisição da linguagem. A coleta de dados foi realizada através de uma entrevista semiestruturada com as mães e gravação em áudio e vídeo da interação mãe-bebê. Os resultados obtidos a partir dos espectrogramas de fala materna, analisados no software PRAAT®, e das filmagens das reações do bebê, demonstram que as mães concebem seus filhos como parceiros dialógicos, sendo que os mesmos são atraídos pelas propriedades prosódicas específicas do manhês, dadas por taxa de elocução diminuída e extensão vocal aumentada, indicando que a prosódia materna desempenha uma função linguística desde os primeiros meses de vida. Espera-se que essa pesquisa auxilie no reconhecimento da importância da prosódia materna na interação mãe-bebê, a partir da qual é possível acompanhar o desenvolvimento linguístico do bebê, além de possibilitar a detecção precoce de possíveis alterações.
... Sentence stress (prosodic prominence) expresses the status of a word as new to the discourse (so-called broad or informational focus), or as having contrastive or narrow-scope focus (boy PAINTS a boat versus BOY paints a boat) (for a review, see Cole 2015). Parents typically speak to infants with an infantdirected style where they use much pitch variation, use high pitch and long segment durations, and in particular stress new or important words in sentences with these acoustic variations (Fernald 1991). This is thought to facilitate NH children's word learning by enhancing the recognition of new word forms and their phonological representations (the role of infant-directed speech in general: Thiessen et al. 2005;Singh et al. 2009;Estes & Hurley 2013; particularly sentence stress, Männel & Friederici 2013). ...
Objectives:
A major issue in the rehabilitation of children with cochlear implants (CIs) is unexplained variance in their language skills, where many of them lag behind children with normal hearing (NH). Here, we assess links between generative language skills and the perception of prosodic stress, and with musical and parental activities in children with CIs and NH. Understanding these links is expected to guide future research and toward supporting language development in children with a CI.
Design:
Twenty-one unilaterally and early-implanted children and 31 children with NH, aged 5 to 13, were classified as musically active or nonactive by a questionnaire recording regularity of musical activities, in particular singing, and reading and other activities shared with parents. Perception of word and sentence stress, performance in word finding, verbal intelligence (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) vocabulary), and phonological awareness (production of rhymes) were measured in all children. Comparisons between children with a CI and NH were made against a subset of 21 of the children with NH who were matched to children with CIs by age, gender, socioeconomic background, and musical activity. Regression analyses, run separately for children with CIs and NH, assessed how much variance in each language task was shared with each of prosodic perception, the child's own music activity, and activities with parents, including singing and reading. All statistical analyses were conducted both with and without control for age and maternal education.
Results:
Musically active children with CIs performed similarly to NH controls in all language tasks, while those who were not musically active performed more poorly. Only musically nonactive children with CIs made more phonological and semantic errors in word finding than NH controls, and word finding correlated with other language skills. Regression analysis results for word finding and VIQ were similar for children with CIs and NH. These language skills shared considerable variance with the perception of prosodic stress and musical activities. When age and maternal education were controlled for, strong links remained between perception of prosodic stress and VIQ (shared variance: CI, 32%/NH, 16%) and between musical activities and word finding (shared variance: CI, 53%/NH, 20%). Links were always stronger for children with CIs, for whom better phonological awareness was also linked to improved stress perception and more musical activity, and parental activities altogether shared significantly variance with word finding and VIQ.
Conclusions:
For children with CIs and NH, better perception of prosodic stress and musical activities with singing are associated with improved generative language skills. In addition, for children with CIs, parental singing has a stronger positive association to word finding and VIQ than parental reading. These results cannot address causality, but they suggest that good perception of prosodic stress, musical activities involving singing, and parental singing and reading may all be beneficial for word finding and other generative language skills in implanted children.
... In many languages and cultures, infant-directed speech (IDS), or the speech to which infants and young children are exposed, systematically differs from adult-directed speech (ADS) in several respects (see Soderstrom, 2007 andSaint-Georges et al., 2013 for comprehensive reviews of the literature on the characteristics of IDS). Compared to ADS, IDS typically has slower speech rates, higher pitch ranges, and longer pauses (Cristia, 2013, Fernald, 1991, 1992. Lexical items in IDS are less diverse and more concrete (Phillips, 1973), and sentences in IDS tend to be shorter than those in ADS (Newport, Gleitman, & Gleitman, 1984). ...
Across languages, lexical items specific to infant-directed speech (i.e., 'baby-talk words') are characterized by a preponderance of onomatopoeia (or highly iconic words), diminutives and reduplication. These lexical characteristics may help infants discover the referential nature of words, identify word referents, and segment fluent speech into words. If so, the amount of lexical input containing these properties should predict infants' rate of vocabulary growth. To test this prediction, we tracked the vocabulary size in 47 English-learning infants from 9 to 21 months and examined whether the patterns of growth can be related to measures of iconicity, diminutives and reduplication in the lexical input at 9 months. Our analyses showed that both diminutives and reduplication in the input were associated with vocabulary growth although measures of iconicity were not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that phonological properties typical of lexical input in infant-directed speech play a role in early vocabulary growth.
... Over the course of the first year of life, infant attraction to what is prosodically salient in a given language further shapes the child's emergent representations of speech. For example, Fernald (1991) described the effects on language development of prosodic modulation in infant-directed speech; Jusczyk (1993Jusczyk ( , 1997 modelled advances over the first year in the grouping of prominent acoustic features such as syllables with higher or more dynamic pitch pattern or longer duration. ...
Scholarly views are divided as to the source of children's knowledge of prosodic structure. Within the framework of a usage-based approach, this chapter compares prosodic structures in children learning four languages at the end of the single-word period in order to identify sources of both similarities and differences between children, within and across language groups. The similarities can generally be traced back to common constraints on the neurophysiology of infant vocal production, while the differences between language groups reflect ambient language accentual patterning and dominant word shapes. Individual differences within and across groups additionally relate to differing child mappings of input forms to familiar production patterns.
... Most of the work on musical aspects of vocal pitch describes it in terms of melodic contour (Fernald, 1989(Fernald, , 1991Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009;Stern, Spieker, & MacKain, 1982;Trehub, Trainor, & Unyk, 1993). A limitation of this type of analysis, however, is that it describes pitch behaviour in a rather global way -in terms of, for example, "rising", "lower" contours -overlooking more precise relations between frequencies. ...
Drawing on the notion of musical intervals, recent studies have demonstrated the use of precise frequency ratios within human vocalisation. Methodologically, these studies have addressed human vocalisation at an individual level. In the present study, we asked whether patterns such as musical intervals can also be found among the voices of people engaging in a conversation as an emerging interpersonal phenomenon. Fifty-six participants were randomly paired and assigned to either a control or a low-trust condition. Frequency ratios were generated by juxtaposing nonlocal fundamental frequency (f0) productions from two people engaged in each given dyadic conversation. Differences were found among conditions, both in terms of interval distribution and precision. These results support the idea that psychological dispositions modulate the musical intervals generated between participants through mutual real-time vocal accommodation. They also underscore the inter-domain use of musical intervals.
... Basic emotions are assumed to be readily represented in music [16], which is made possible by manipulating basic acoustic (e.g., pitch, tempo, rhythm, loudness, timbre) and musical-system-specific cues (e.g., mode) [14,[17][18]. This explains the ubiquity of infant-directed singing and speech in parent-infant bonding because the melodies effectively engage preverbal infants in emotion and intention sharing [19][20][21][22]. For instance, Rock, Trainor, and Addison [23] showed that mothers considered the goal of communication (to arouse or soothe the infants) and rendered the same song in different performance styles accordingly. ...
Emerging evidence has indicated infants’ early sensitivity to acoustic cues in music. Do they interpret these cues in emotional terms to represent others’ affective states? The present study examined infants’ development of emotional understanding of music with a violation-of-expectation paradigm. Twelve- and 20-month-olds were presented with emotionally concordant and discordant music-face displays on alternate trials. The 20-month-olds, but not the 12-month-olds, were surprised by emotional incongruence between musical and facial expressions, suggesting their sensitivity to musical emotion. In a separate non-music task, only the 20-month-olds were able to use an actress’s affective facial displays to predict her subsequent action. Interestingly, for the 20-month-olds, such emotion-action understanding correlated with sensitivity to musical expressions measured in the first task. These two abilities however did not correlate with family income, parental estimation of language and communicative skills, and quality of parent-child interaction. The findings suggest that sensitivity to musical emotion and emotion-action understanding may be supported by a generalised common capacity to represent emotion from social cues, which lays a foundation for later social-communicative development.
... The results further confirmed the second hypothesis on the association of IDS prosody with better infant pre-linguistic and linguistic skills (Fernald, 1991;Golinkoff et al., 2015). Hence, prototypical IDS prosody corresponded with greater infant vocal response and imitation (Golinkoff et al., 2015) and better vocabulary comprehension and production (Fernald & Mazzie, 1991;Fisher & Tokura, 1995), with the first showing a greater effect size. ...
... The results further confirmed the second hypothesis on the association of IDS prosody with better infant pre-linguistic and linguistic skills (Fernald, 1991;Golinkoff et al., 2015). Hence, prototypical IDS prosody corresponded with greater infant vocal response and imitation (Golinkoff et al., 2015) and better vocabulary comprehension and production (Fernald & Mazzie, 1991;Fisher & Tokura, 1995), with the first showing a greater effect size. ...
... Further information for identifying the critical information in an utterance is also available from prosodic information. When attempting to teach a child a new word, the speaker tends to increase the pitch variation, intensity, and duration of the target word within the utterance (Fernald, 1991). Thus, within-language cues provide valuable multiple information sources to assist in word-referent mappings. ...
There is substantial variation in language experience, yet there is surprising similarity in the language structure acquired. Constraints on language structure may be external modulators that result in this canalization of language structure, or else they may derive from the broader, communicative environment in which language is acquired. In this paper, the latter perspective is tested for its adequacy in explaining robustness of language learning to environmental variation. A computational model of word learning from cross-situational, multimodal information was constructed and tested. Key to the model's robustness was the presence of multiple, individually unreliable information sources to support learning. This “degeneracy” in the language system has a detrimental effect on learning, compared to a noise-free environment, but has a critically important effect on acquisition of a canalized system that is resistant to environmental noise in communication.
... When examining the relation between music and language, the processing of pitch has always been a main focus. This is not surprising since pitch is the most salient aspect for infants in both language (i.e., infant-directed speech, Fernald, 1991) and music (Chang & Trehub, 1977;Trehub et al., 1984). Accurate perception of the fine-grained difference between two pitches is a prerequisite for efficient music perception. ...
This study explores the influence of bilingualism on the cognitive processing of language and music. Specifically, we investigate how infants learning a non-tone language perceive linguistic and musical pitch and how bilingualism affects cross-domain pitch perception. Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants of 8-9 months participated in the study. All infants had Dutch as one of the first languages. The other first languages, varying among bilingual families, were not tone or pitch accent languages. In two experiments, infants were tested on the discrimination of a lexical (N = 42) or a violin (N = 48) pitch contrast via a visual habituation paradigm. The two contrasts shared identical pitch contours but differed in timbre. Non-tone language learning infants did not discriminate the lexical contrast regardless of their ambient language environment. When perceiving the violin contrast, bilingual but not monolingual infants demonstrated robust discrimination. We attribute bilingual infants’ heightened sensitivity in the musical domain to the enhanced acoustic sensitivity stemming from a bilingual environment. The distinct perceptual patterns between language and music and the influence of acoustic salience on perception suggest processing diversion and association in the first year of life. Results indicate that the perception of music may entail both shared neural network with language processing, and unique neural network that is distinct from other cognitive functions.
... IDS plays an important role in at least three distinct but related areas of development. It has been proposed that IDS (1) captures infant attention (Cooper & Aslin, 1990;Fernald & Kuhl, 1987;Fernald et al., 1989;Werker & McLeod, 1989), (2) conveys speaker affect (Fernald, 1989;Trainor, Austin, & Desjardins, 2000;Werker & McLeod, 1989), and (3) facilitates some aspects of language learning (Fernald, 1991;Karzon, 1985;Kemler-Nelson, Hirsh-Pasek, Jusczyk, & Wright-Cassidy, 1989;Thiessen, Hill, & Saffran, 2005). The unique prosodic qualities of IDS seem to draw infants' gaze towards the speaker and improve infants' understanding of affect. ...
Both human and nonhuman primate adults use infant-directed facial and vocal expressions across many contexts when interacting with infants (e.g., feeding, playing). This infant-oriented style of communication, known as infant-directed speech (IDS), seems to benefit human infants in numerous ways, including facilitating language acquisition. Given the variety of contexts in which adults use IDS, we hypothesized that IDS supports learning beyond the linguistic domain and that these benefits may extend to nonhuman primates. We exposed 2.5-month-old rhesus macaque infants (N = 15) to IDS, adult-directed speech (ADS), and a non-social control (CTR) during a video presentation of unrelated stimuli. After a 5- or 60-minute delay, infants were shown the familiar video side-by-side with a novel video. Infants exhibited a novelty preference after the 5-minute delay, but not after the 60-minute delay, in the ADS and CTR conditions, and a novelty preference in the IDS condition only after the 60-minute delay. These results are the first to suggest that exposure to IDS affects infants' long-term memory, even in non-linguistic animals.
... Further information for identifying the critical information in an utterance is also available from prosodic information. When teaching a child a new word, the speaker tends to increase the pitch variation, intensity, and duration of the target word within the utterance (Fernald, 1991). ...
There is substantial variation in language experience between learners, yet there is surprising similarity in the language structure they eventually acquire. While it is possible that this canalisation of language structure may be due to constraints imposed by modulators, such as an innate language system, it may instead derive from the broader, communicative environment in which language is acquired. In this paper, the latter perspective is tested for its adequacy in explaining the robustness of language learning to environmental variation. A computational model of word learning from cross-situational, multimodal information was constructed and tested. Key to the model's robustness was the presence of multiple, individually unreliable information sources that could support learning when combined. This "degeneracy " in the language system had a detrimental effect on learning when compared to a noise-free environment, but was critically important for acquiring a canalised system that is resistant to environmental noise in communication.
... Most of the work on musical aspects of vocal pitch describes it in terms of melodic contour (Fernald, 1989(Fernald, , 1991Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009;Stern, Spieker, & MacKain, 1982;Trehub, Trainor, & Unyk, 1993). A limitation of this type of analysis, however, is that it describes pitch behaviour in a rather global way -in terms of, for example, "rising", "lower" contours -overlooking more precise relations between frequencies. ...
Drawing on the notion of musical intervals, recent studies have demonstrated the use of precise frequency ratios within human vocalisation. Methodologically, these studies have addressed human vocalisation at an individual level. In the present study, we asked whether patterns such as musical intervals can also be found among the voices of people engaging in a conversation as an emerging interpersonal phenomenon. Fifty-six participants were randomly paired and assigned to either a control or a low-trust condition. Frequency ratios were generated by juxtaposing nonlocal fundamental frequency (f0) productions from two people engaged in each given dyadic conversation. Differences were found among conditions, both in terms of interval distribution and precision. These results support the idea that psychological dispositions modulate the musical intervals generated between participants through mutual real-time vocal accommodation. They also underscore the inter-domain use of musical intervals.
Clara, who is a music teacher in a school, has recently noticed that the boys and girls are no longer interested in her classes.
El presente trabajo indaga sobre la influencia de la depresión posparto (DPP) materna en las características prosódicas del Habla Dirigida al Bebé (HDB) y las emisiones preverbales infantiles en diversos contextos de interacción madre-hijo/a.
Participaron 40 madres y sus bebés entre 3 y 6 meses de edad. Las madres fueron evaluadas con la Escala de DPP de Edimburgo (Cox, Holden y Sagoysky, 1987) y las díadas madre-hijo fueron filmadas en sesiones de juego no estructurado; 27 madres no presentaron indicadores de DPP y 13, sí.
Las madres con DPP emitieron menor cantidad de vocalizaciones que las del grupo control y presentaron menor intensidad media y máxima al hablarle a sus bebés de 5-6 meses y esto fue particularmente observable en bebés varones (p < .07). Además, estas madres usaron menos curvas descendentes al dirigirse a bebés más pequeños (3-4 meses) y curvas ascendentes y descendentes al dirigirse a sus hijos varones (p < .01).
En los bebés –tanto en los de 5-6 meses como en varones– (con madres con DPP se observó menor producción de emisiones preverbales, aunque sin ser significativa. La DPP materna impactó en los bebés más pequeños observándose una disminución de la frecuencia fundamental (p < .01) y de las intensidades media y máxima, pero solo en bebés varones (p < .05). También se halló una ausencia de curvas con forma de U en los varones e hijos de madres con DPP (p < .05).
Aparentemente, la DPP afecta el HDB materno, el que varía a nivel acústico y prosódico en función de la edad del bebé afectando las emisiones preverbales, siendo mayor el impacto en los varones.
Daniel Stern’s The Interpersonal World of the Infant (1985) revolutionized psychoanalytic thinking about both infant development and therapeutic work with adults. An enduring legacy of Stern’s opus is the belief that language plays a minor role in infant development. By contrast, recent research demonstrates that infants use others’ spoken words to understand their interpersonal experiences beginning in the first year of life. Indeed, word meanings emerge from lived experiences. The research compels us to think anew about the connectedness of lived experiences and the words of language, and has implications for understanding both infant development and therapeutic action.
In this paper intonation is studied as a basic characteristic of music, and as a basis for verbal and non-verbal communication. Human thinking is not entirely mediated by verbal language and its richness surpasses the capacity of verbal expression. Considering intonation as a crucial means of communication and interaction, it is assumed that the need for communication could lie in the origins of music. Music permits us to put into practice various modes of social interaction. It is seen as a unique type of social communication, through which information about the psycho-emotional life of people is transmitted more clearly and holistically than through verbal communication.
Infants' music perception skills are similar to those of adults in their sensitivity to musical pitch and rhythm patterns and their long-term memory for melodies. At times, infants outperform adults, as with pitch and rhythm patterns that are foreign or unconventional. By 12 months of age, infants are sensitive to some culture-specific aspects of musical structure, providing evidence of early learning. Infants' exposure to music comes primarily but not exclusively from maternal singing, which is universal. Such singing has important consequences for infant attention, emotion regulation, and learning.
The elements of music and sonority anticipate, precede and accompany the development of language; they serve to mediate the process of integration between the self and the alter ego. The body of our musical heritage is integrated with the social genesis of thought, and it allows us to recognize the experiences and emotional states of other human beings. Pre-verbal musical input substitutes the initial lack of practice of language; after the explosion of speech in the child, it further enriches language skills. The perception and the production of sound, starting from the use of the voice, which precedes the appearance of linguistic patterns, stem from precocious cerebral structures which are activated by sounds produced by the caregiver. This acoustic, proto-linguistic dialogue between the couple mother-child serves to create an ideal container where both cognitive and emotional data is present, and where the motivational and natural epistemological urge in children is reinforced. Pre-natal sounds, vocalises, sound games of Child Directed Speech, nursery rhymes and finally the sharing of spoken language are the aspects of musicality linked to language and concurrent to the linguistic and interpersonal growth of the skills in children.
By the end of their first year, children are on the threshold of being able to extract and internally represent meaningful chunks of language (Fernald, 1991), i.e. to crack the language code. During the first year they have been discovering which sounds and sound contrasts are important in the ambient language, and are becoming familiar with the dominant stress and melodic patterns of utterances; information that will be used to target speech chunks to extract. They have also been developing articulation and memory skills that will enable them to make passable attempts at repeating (imitating) words they hear. Articulatory skills are further refined by these attempts to imitate salient chunks of the ambient language.
How children succeed in acquiring language, without apparent effort and following similar milestones, at a time when dressing, and eating without getting dirty are still problems, has been a central question in generative linguistics (Chomsky, 1957, 1959, 1975; Guasti, 2002) since its inception. This chapter will provide an answer to this question by adopting the Universal Grammar (UG) approach to language acquisition which presumes that language is what makes us humans and distinguishes us from non-human animals. We acquire language because it is part and parcel of our nature.
This paper provides an analytical tool for the study of intertextuality in music. A brief part explains the motives both for and against focusing on music and language parallelisms. It follows the proposal for a systematic linguistics for musicology centered on linguistic layers, which is then applied to the Hjelmslevian semiotics. This results in a stratified musical sign, where several planes of expression affect the plane of content. This approach provides a novel and integrative framework that is useful for analyzing music intertextuality.
The theory of natural pedagogy is an important focus of research on the evolution and development of cultural learning. It proposes that we are born pupils; that human children genetically inherit a package of psychological adaptations that make them receptive to teaching. In this article, I first examine the components of the package—eye contact, contingencies, infant-directed speech, gaze cuing, and rational imitation—asking in each case whether current evidence indicates that the component is a reliable feature of infant behavior and a genetic adaptation for teaching. I then discuss three fundamental insights embodied in the theory: Imitation is not enough for cumulative cultural inheritance, the extra comes from blind trust, and tweaking is a powerful source of cognitive change. Combining the results of the empirical review with these insights, I argue that human receptivity to teaching is founded on nonspecific genetic adaptations for social bonding and social learning and acquires its species- and functionally specific features through the operation of domain-general processes of learning in sociocultural contexts. We engage, not in natural pedagogy, but in cultural pedagogy.
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