Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T23:34:52.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Exploring the association of infant receptive language and pitch variability in fathers’ infant-directed speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2019

Jean QUIGLEY ,
Elizabeth NIXON  and
Sarah LAWSON
Jean QUIGLEY*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Elizabeth NIXON
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Sarah LAWSON
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
*
*Corresponding author: School of Psychology, Áras an Phiarsaigh, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the links between prosodic features of paternal Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) and child characteristics. Pitch variability measures were extracted from the speech samples of 50 fathers during unstructured play with their two-year-old children. Evidence for a link between child receptive language ability (measured by the Bayley Scales of Infant Development III) and fathers’ pitch variability was obtained from Multiple Hierarchical Regression. Findings support the hypothesis that fathers tailor their speech to their children. This is one of the few studies to examine the relationship between fathers’ IDS and child language ability.

Keywords

fathers’ infant directed speechprosodychild language ability
Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 800 - 811
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albers, C. A., & Grieve, A. J. (2007). Test review: Bayley, N. (2006). Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development – Third Edition. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 25(2), 180–90.Google Scholar
Amano, S., Nakatani, T., & Kondo, T. (2006). Fundamental frequency of infants’ and parents’ utterances in longitudinal recordings. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(3), 1636–47.Google Scholar
Audacity Team (2015). Audacity (Version 2.1.2) [Computer program]. Retrieved September 2016 from <http://audacityteam.org/>..>Google Scholar
Bayley, N. (2006). Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development – Third Edition. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.Google Scholar
Benders, T., Fletcher, R., & St George, J. (2016). Infant-directed speech by fathers: acoustic-dynamic correlates of high unpredictability. Paper presented at International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, USA. <https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.1103.3207>..>Google Scholar
Bergelson, E., Casillas, M., Soderstrom, M., Seidl, A., Warlaumont, A. S. & Amatuni, A. (2019). What do North American babies hear? A large-scale cross-corpus analysis. Developmental Science, 22(1), e12724 <https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12724>..>Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2016). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 6.0.20, retrieved 12 September 2016 from <www.praat.org>..>Google Scholar
Broesch, T. L., & Bryant, G. A. (2017). Prosody in infant-directed speech is similar across western and traditional cultures. Journal of Cognitive Development, 16(1), 31–43.Google Scholar
Butler, S. C., O'Sullivan, L. P., Shah, B. L., & Berthier, N. E. (2014). Preference for infant-directed speech in preterm infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 37(4), 505–11.Google Scholar
Cristia, A. (2013). Input to language: the phonetics and perception of infant-directed speech. Language and Linguistics Compass, 7, 157–70.Google Scholar
De Palma, P., & VanDam, M. (2017). Using automatic speech processing to analyse fundamental frequency of Child-Directed Speech stored in a very large audio corpus. Paper presented at joint 17th World Congress of International Fuzzy Systems Association and 9th International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems, Otsu, Japan. Online <https://doi.org/10.1109/IFSA-SCIS.2017.8023224>..>Google Scholar
Farran, L. K., Lee, C.-C., Yoo, H., & Oller, D. K. (2016). Cross-cultural register differences in infant-directed speech: an initial study. PLoS ONE, 11(3), <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151518>..>Google Scholar
Fernald, A., Taeschner, T., Dunn, J., Papousek, M., De Boysson-Bardies, B., & Fukui, I. (1989). A cross-language study of prosodic modifications in mothers’ and fathers’ speech to preverbal infants. Journal of Child Language, 16(3), 477–501.Google Scholar
Franklin, B., Warlaumont, A. S., Messinger, D., Bene, E., Iyer, S. N., Lee, C. C., Lambert, B., & Oller, D. K. (2014). Effects of parental interaction on infant vocalization rate, variability and vocal type. Language Learning and Development, 10(3), 279–96.Google Scholar
Gergely, A., Farago, T., Galambos, A., & Topal, J. (2017). Differential effects of speech situations on mothers’ and fathers’ infant-directed and dog-directed speech: an acoustic analysis. Scientific Reports, 7, 13739 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13883-2>..>Google Scholar
Graf Estes, K., & Hurley, K. (2013). Infant-directed prosody helps infants map sounds to meanings. Infancy, 18(5), 797–824.Google Scholar
Harewood, T., Vallotton, C. D., & Brophy-Herb, H. (2016). More than just the breadwinner: the effects of fathers’ parenting stress on children's language and cognitive development. Infant and Child Development, 26(2), e1984 <https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.1984>..>Google Scholar
Hixon, T. J., Weismer, G. & Hoit, J. D. (2018). Preclinical speech science: anatomy, physiology, acoustics and perception (3rd ed.). San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing.Google Scholar
Kaplan, P. S., Danko, C., Cejka, A. M., & Everhart, K. (2015). Maternal depression and the learning-promoting effects of infant-directed speech: roles of maternal sensitivity, depression diagnosis, and speech acoustic cues. Infant Behaviour and Development, 41, 52–63.Google Scholar
Kaplan, P. S., Sliter, J. K., & Burgess, A. P. (2007). Infant-directed speech produced by fathers with symptoms of depression: effect on infant associative learning in a conditioned-attention paradigm. Infant Behavior and Development, 4(30), 535–45.Google Scholar
Kitamura, C., & Burnham, D. (2003). Pitch and communicative intent in mother's speech: adjustments for age and sex in the first year. Infancy, 4(1), 85–110.Google Scholar
Kitamura, C., Thanavishuth, C., Burnham, D., & Luksaneeyanawin, S. (2002). Universality and specificity in infant directed speech: pitch modifications as a function of infant age and sex in a tonal and non-tonal language. Infant Behavior and Development, 24, 372–92.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K., Andruski, J. E., Chistovich, I. A., Chistovich, L. A., Kozhevnikova, E. V., Ryskina, V. L., Stolyarova, E. I., Sundberg, U., & Lacerda, F. (1997). Cross-language analysis of phonetic units in language addressed to infants. Science, 277(5326), 684–6.Google Scholar
Leech, K. A., Salo, V. C., Rowe, M. L., & Cabrera, N. J. (2013). Father input and child vocabulary development: the importance of Wh questions and clarification requests. Seminars in Speech and Language, 34(4), 249–59.Google Scholar
Liu, H. M., Tsao, F. M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Acoustic analysis of lexical tone in Mandarin infant-directed speech. Developmental Psychology, 43, 912–17.Google Scholar
Ma, W., Golinkoff, R. M., Houston, D. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2011). Word learning in infant- and adult-directed speech. Language Learning and Development, 7(3), 185–201.Google Scholar
Madaschi, V., Mecca, T. P., Macedo, E. C., & Paula, C. S. (2016). Bayley-III Scales of Infant and Toddler Development: transcultural adaptation and psychometric properties. Paidéia, 26(64), 189–97.Google Scholar
Mani, N. & Pätzold, W. (2016). Sixteen-month-old infants’ segment words from infant- and adult-directed speech. Language Learning and Development, 12(4), 499–508.Google Scholar
Narayan, C. R., & McDermott, L. C. (2016). Speech rate and pitch characteristics of infant-directed speech: longitudinal and cross-linguistic observations. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 139(3), 1272.Google Scholar
Nienhuys, T. G., Cross, T. G., & Horsborough, K. M. (1984). Child variables influencing maternal speech style: deaf and hearing children. Journal of Communication Disorders, 17(3), 189–207.Google Scholar
Quigley, J., McNally, S., & Lawson, S. (2016). Prosodic patterns in interaction of low-risk and at-risk-of-autism spectrum disorders infants and their mothers at 12 and 18 months. Language Learning and Development, 12(3), 295–310.Google Scholar
Saint-Georges, C., Chetouani, M., Cassel, R., Apicella, F., Mahdhaoui, A., Muratori, F., Laznik, M., & Cohen, D. (2013). Motherese in interaction: at the cross-road of emotion and cognition? (A systematic review). PLoS ONE, 8(10), e78103 <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078103>..>Google Scholar
Schwab, J., & Lew-Williams, C. (2016). Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech. WIREs Cognitive Science, 7(4), 264–75.Google Scholar
Schwab, J., Rowe, M., Cabrera, N., & Lew-Williams, C. (2017). Fathers’ repetition of words is coupled with children's vocabularies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166, 437–50.Google Scholar
Seidl, A., Cristia, A., Soderstrom, M., Ko, E., Abel, E., Kellerman, A., & Schwichtenberg, J. A. (2018). Infant–mother acoustic–prosodic alignment and developmental risk. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61, 1–12.Google Scholar
Shute, B., & Wheldall, K. (1995). The incidence of raised average pitch and increased pitch variability in British motherese speech and the influence of maternal occupation and discourse form. First Language, 15(1), 35–55.Google Scholar
Shute, B., & Wheldall, K. (1999). Fundamental frequency and temporal modifications in the speech of British fathers to their children. Educational Psychology, 19(4), 221–33.Google Scholar
Soderstrom, M. (2007). Beyond babytalk: re-evaluating the nature and content of speech input to preverbal infants. Developmental Review, 27(4), 501–32.Google Scholar
Spinelli, M., Fasolo, M., & Mesman, J. (2017). Does prosody make the difference? A meta-analysis on relations between prosodic aspects of infant-directed speech and infant outcomes. Developmental Review, 44, 1–18.Google Scholar
Suttora, C., Salerni, N., Zanchi, P., Zampini, L., Spinelli, M., & Fasolo, M. (2017). Relationships between structural and acoustic properties of maternal talk and children's early word recognition. First Language, 37(6), 612–29.Google Scholar
VanDam, M., De Palma, P., & Strong, W. E. (2015). Fathers’ use of fundamental frequency in motherese. Journal of the Acoustical Soaciety of America, 137(4), 2267.Google Scholar
Van Puyvelde, N., Loots, G., Gillisjans, L., Pattyn, N. & Quintana, C. (2015). A cross-cultural comparison of tonal synchrony and pitch imitation in the vocal dialogs of Belgian Flemish-speaking and Mexican Spanish-speaking mother–infant dyads. Infant Behavior and Development, 40, 41–53.Google Scholar
Warren-Leubecker, A., & Bohannon, J. N. (1984). Intonation patterns in child-directed speech: mother–father differences. Child Development, 55(4), 1379–85.Google Scholar
Weisleder, A., & Fernald, A. (2013). Talking to children matters: early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2143–52.Google Scholar
Yurovsky, D. (2018). A communicative approach to early word learning. New Ideas in Psychology, 50, 73–79.Google Scholar