Infant-Directed Speech

Infant-directed speech is a style of speech directed toward infants. This type of speech pattern was previously called motherese, because it was assumed that it applied only to mothers. However, that assumption was wrong, and the gender-neutral term infant- directed speech is now used more frequently.

Infant-directed speech is characterized by short, simple sentences. Pitch (the highness or lowness of a sound) becomes generally higher, the range of frequencies (essentially, the difference between the highest and the lowest pitch used) increases, and intonation (the rise and fall in pitch) is more varied. There is also repetition of words, and topics are restricted to items that are assumed to be comprehensible to infants, such as concrete objects in the baby’s environment. Sometimes infant-directed speech includes amusing sounds that are not even words, imitating the prelinguistic speech of infants. In other cases, it has little formal structure but is similar to the kind of telegraphic speech that infants use as they develop their own language skills.

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Infant-directed speech changes as children become older. Around the end of the first year, infant-directed speech takes on more adultlike qualities. Sentences become longer and more complex, although individual words are still spoken slowly and deliberately. Pitch is also used to focus attention on particularly important words.

Infant-directed speech plays an important role in infants’ acquisition of language. Newborns respond to such speech more readily than they do to regular language, a fact that suggests that they may be particularly receptive to it. Furthermore, some research suggests that unusually extensive exposure to infant-directed speech early in life is related to the comparatively early appearance of first words and earlier linguistic competence in other areas.

Is infant-directed speech similar across cultures? In some respects, it clearly is. According to a growing body of research, there are basic similarities across cultures in the nature of infant-directed speech. Consider, for instance, a comparison of the major characteristics of speech directed at infants used by native speakers of English and Spanish. Of the ten most frequent features, six are common to both: exaggerated intonation, high pitch, lengthened vowels, repetition, lower volume, and instructional emphasis (that is, heavy stress on certain key words, such as emphasizing the word “ball” in the sentence, “No, that’s not a ball.”). Similarly, mothers in the United States, Sweden, and Russia all exaggerate and elongate the pronunciation of the three vowel sounds of “ee,” “ah,” and “oh” when speaking to infants in similar ways, despite differences in the languages in which the sounds are used. Even deaf mothers use a form of infant-directed speech: When communicating with their infants, deaf mothers use sign language at a significantly slower tempo than when communicating with adults, and they frequently repeat the signs.

The cross-cultural similarities in infant-directed speech are so great, in fact, that they appear in some facets of language specific to particular types of interactions. For instance, evidence comparing American English, German, and Mandarin Chinese speakers shows that in each of the languages, pitch rises when a mother is attempting to get an infant’s attention or produce a response, while pitch falls when she is trying to calm an infant. Why do we find such similarities across very different languages? One hypothesis is that the characteristics of infant-directed speech activate innate responses in infants. As we have noted, infants seem to prefer infant-directed speech over adult-directed speech, suggesting that their perceptual systems may be more responsive to such characteristics. Another explanation is that infant-directed speech facilitates language development, providing cues as to the meaning of speech before infants have developed the capacity to understand the meanings of words.

Despite the similarities in the style of infant-directed speech across diverse cultures, there are some important cultural differences in the quantity of speech that infants hear from their parents. For example, although the Gusii of Kenya care for their infants in an extremely close, physical way, they speak to them less than American parents do.

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►Infant-directed speech is a style of speech directed toward infants. This type of speech pattern was previously calledmotherese, because it was assumed that it applied only to mothers. However, that assumption was wrong, and the gender-neutral term infant- directed speech is now used more frequently.

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