Age-related changes in acoustic modifications of Mandarin maternal speech to preverbal infants and five-year-old children: a longitudinal study
Open accessAbstract
Acoustic-phonetic exaggeration of infant-directed speech (IDS) is well documented, but few studies address whether these features are modified with a child's age. Mandarin-speaking mothers were recorded while addressing an adult and their child at two ages (0 ; 7–1 ; 0 and 5 ; 0) to examine the acoustic-phonetic differences between IDS and child-directed speech (CDS). CDS exhibits an exaggeration pattern resembling that of IDS – expanded vowel space, longer vowels, higher pitch and greater lexical tone differences – when compared to ADS. Longitudinal analysis demonstrated that the extent of acoustic exaggeration is significantly smaller in CDS than in IDS. Age-related changes in maternal speech provide some support for the hypothesis that mothers adjust their speech directed toward children as a function of the child's language ability.
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New data show potential benefits of early motherese extend to age 5 years.
“New data show that the potential benefits of early motherese extend to the age of 5 years (Liu et al., 2009).”
From Brain mechanisms in early language acquisition (2010) · cites this paper as Liu et al., 2009
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“New data show that the potential benefits of early motherese extend to the age of 5 years (Liu et al., 2009).”
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- Authors
- LIU, H.-M., TSAO, F.-M., & KUHL, P. K.
- Affiliations
- National Taiwan Normal University (TW)
- National Taiwan University (TW)
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- LIU, HUEI-MEI
- Venue
- Journal of Child Language
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2009-02-23
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 909-922
- ISSN
- 0305-0009 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-7602
- PMC
- PMC2818882
- OpenAlex
- W2011845896
- Cited by
- 128
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 11.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of Child Language (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD037954)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Linguistic Variation and Morphology
- Keywords
- infant-directed speech, child-directed speech, maternal speech, mandarin, lexical tone, vowel space, pitch, child language acquisition, longitudinal change
- MeSH terms
- Aging, Analysis of Variance, Child, Preschool, Female, Humans, Infant, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Mother-Child Relations, Mothers, Phonetics, Speech, Speech Acoustics, Speech Production Measurement, Time Factors
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