The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Prelinguistic evolution in early hominins: Whence motherese?
Abstract
In order to formulate hypotheses about the evolutionary underpinnings that preceded the first glimmerings of language, mother-infant gestural and vocal interactions are compared in chimpanzees and humans and used to model those of early hominins. These data, along with paleoanthropological evidence, suggest that prelinguistic vocal substrates for protolanguage that had prosodic features similar to contemporary motherese evolved as the trend for enlarging brains in late australopithecines/early Homo progressively increased the difficulty of parturition, thus causing a selective shift toward females that gave birth to relatively undeveloped neonates. It is hypothesized that hominin mothers adopted new foraging strategies that entailed maternal silencing, reassuring, and controlling of the behaviors of physically removed infants (i.e., that shared human babies' inability to cling to their mothers' bodies). As mothers increasingly used prosodic and gestural markings to encourage juveniles to behave and to follow, the meanings of certain utterances (words) became conventionalized. This hypothesis is based on the premises that hominin mothers that attended vigilantly to infants were strongly selected for, and that such mothers had genetically based potentials for consciously modifying vocalizations and gestures to control infants, both of which receive support from the literature.
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“Once early language itself became something that was frequently taught (although often implicitly, without overt tutelage), this in turn would have generated selection for effective means of teaching language to children, such as ‘infant-directed speech’ (‘motherese’) (Falk, 2004).”
From The origins of language in teaching (2017) · cites this paper as Falk, 2004
In the citing paper
“Children are known to hear some linguistic structures selectively and to ignore others, a phenomenon that may have generated selection for language structure that is “child friendly” (Deacon, 1997; Falk, 2004; Fitch, 2004, 2005).”
From The origins of language in teaching (2017) · cites this paper as Falk, 2004
Citations
Cites
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“Just as certain referential calls of vervet monkeys (Cheney & Seyfarth 1990) and over 30 discrete calls of chimpanzees from Gombe (Goodall 1986) are produced and interpreted similarly by members of their respective social groups, protolinguistic utterances of early hominins would have become…”
BackgroundGenetic conflicts in human pregnancy
Haig, D. (1993) · The Quarterly Review of Biology · doi:10.1086/418300 · Cited by 1,253
Motor and cognitive functions of the ventral premotor cortex
Rizzolatti, G., Fogassi, L., & Gallese, V. (2002) · Current Opinion in Neurobiology · doi:10.1016/s0959-4388(02)00308-2 · Cited by 592
The signal functions of early infant crying
Soltis, J. (2004) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x0400010x · Cited by 387
Energetics and the Evolution of the Genus HOMO
Aiello, L. C., & Wells, J. C. K. (2002) · Annual Review of Anthropology · doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085403 · Cited by 259
Infant Intermodal Speech Perception Is a Left-Hemisphere Function
MacKain, K., Studdert-Kennedy, M., Spieker, S., & Stern, D. (1983) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.6828865 · Cited by 184
Micro-Timing in Mother-Infant Communication
Beebe, B. (1982) · Nonverbal Communication Today · doi:10.1515/9783110828771-014 · Cited by 77
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Arbib, M. A. (2005) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x05000038 · Cited by 1,164
Joint music making promotes prosocial behavior in 4-year-old children
Kirschner, S., & Tomasello, M. (2010) · Evolution and Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.04.004 · Cited by 896
The psychological functions of music listening
Schäfer, T., Sedlmeier, P., Städtler, C., & Huron, D. (2013) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00511 · Cited by 637
Motherese in Interaction: At the Cross-Road of Emotion and Cognition? (A Systematic Review)
Saint-Georges, C., Chetouani, M., Cassel, R., Apicella, F., Mahdhaoui, A., Muratori, F., Laznik, M.-C., & Cohen, D. (2013) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078103 · Cited by 343
A shift toward birthing relatively large infants early in human evolution.
DeSilva, J. M. (2011) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1003865108 · Cited by 177
Fancourt, D., & Perkins, R. (2017) · Public Health · doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2017.01.016 · Cited by 100
Perkins, R., Yorke, S., & Fancourt, D. (2018) · BMC Psychology · doi:10.1186/s40359-018-0253-0 · Cited by 92
The origins of language in teaching
Laland, K. N. (2017) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-016-1077-7 · Cited by 80
Oxytocin shapes parental motion during father-infant interaction
Weisman, O., Delaherche, E., Rondeau, M., Chetouani, M., Cohen, D., & Feldman, R. (2013) · Biology Letters · doi:10.1098/rsbl.2013.0828 · Cited by 63
Turiel, E., & Dahl, A. (2019) · The Normative Animal? · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190846466.003.0010 · Cited by 34
Robledo, J.-P., Cross, I., Boada-Bayona, L., & Demogeot, N. (2022) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1033746 · Cited by 22
“Such a shift thus stimulated the development of infant cry on the one hand (Soltis, 2004), and on parental vocal response to it on the other hand, as ‘disembodied extensions of mothers’ cradling arms’ (Falk, 2004b, p. 462).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Falk, D.
- Venue
- Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2004-08
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 491-503
- ISSN
- 0140-525X
- 1469-1825
- Cited by
- 284
- References
- 12
- Language
- en
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