Prosody and focus in speech to infants and adults.

Abstract

Two studies investigated adults ' use of prosodic emphasis to mark focused words in speech to infants and adults. In Experiment 1,18 mothers told a story to a 14-month-old infant and to an adult, using a picture book in which 6 target items were the focus of attention. Prosodic emphasis was measured both acoustically and subjectively In speech to infants, mothers consistently positioned focused words on exaggerated pitch peaks in utterance-final position, whereas in speech to adults prosodic emphasis was more variable. In Experiment 2,12 women taught another adult an assembly procedure involving familiar and novel terminology. In both studies, stressed words in adultdirected speech rarely coincided with pitch peaks. However, in infant-directed speech, mothers regularly used pitch prominence to convey primary stress. The use of exaggerated pitch peaks at the ends of utterances to mark focused words may facilitate speech processing for the infant. Research on features of early linguistic experiences that influence language acquisition has begun to explore the role of prosody in providing the infant with acoustic cues to linguistic structure in the speech waveform. Faced with the problem of discovering the linguistically relevant units in continuous

Cites (5)

1. Joint attention and early language
   Tomasello, Michael, Farrar, Michael Jeffrey · 1986 · Child Development
2. Four-month-old infants prefer to listen to motherese
   Fernald, Anne · 1985 · Infant Behavior and Development
3. Intonation and communicative intent in mothers’ speech to infants: Is the melody the message?
   Fernald, Anne · 1989 · Child Development
4. Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech
   Fernald, Anne, Kuhl, Patricia · 1987 · Infant Behavior and Development
5. infant preference for both male and female infant-directed talk: a developmental study of attentional and affective responsiveness
   Werker, Janet F., McLeod, Peter J. · 1989 · Canadian Journal of Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie

Show all 5 references

Cited by (16)

1. Infant‐directed speech facilitates word segmentation
   Thiessen, Erik D., Hill, Emily A., Saffran, Jenny R. · 2005 · Infancy
2. Why Is Infant Language Learning Facilitated by Parental Responsiveness?
   Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S., Kuchirko, Yana, Song, Lulu · 2014 · Current Directions in Psychological Science
3. How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals
   Kline, Michelle Ann · 2015 · Behavioral and Brain Sciences
4. Evidence for ‘motionese’: modifications in mothers’ infant‐directed action
   Brand, Rebecca J., Baldwin, Dare A., Ashburn, Leslie A. · 2002 · Developmental Science
5. Infants' Reliance on a Social Criterion for Establishing Word-Object Relations
   Baldwin, Dare A., Markman, Ellen M., Bill, Brigitte, Desjardins, Renee N., Irwin, Jane M., Tidball, Glynnis · 1996 · Child Development

See all 509