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Cited by 33Language Development and DisordersLanguage and cultural evolutionPhonetics and Phonology Research

Perspectives on the origin of language: Infants vocalize most during independent vocal play but produce their most speech-like vocalizations during turn taking

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Long, Helen L., Ramsay, Gordon, Griebel, Ulrike, Bene, Edina R., Bowman, Dale D., Burkhardt-Reed, Megan M., Oller, D. Kimbrough·2022·PLOS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0279395PMC PMC9803194
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Abstract

A growing body of research emphasizes both endogenous and social motivations in human vocal development. Our own efforts seek to establish an evolutionary and developmental perspective on the existence and usage of speech-like vocalizations (“protophones”) in the first year of life. We evaluated the relative occurrence of protophones in 40 typically developing infants across the second-half year based on longitudinal all-day recordings. Infants showed strong endogenous motivation to vocalize, producing vastly more protophones during independent vocal exploration and play than during vocal turn taking. Both periods of vocal play and periods of turn-taking corresponded to elevated levels of the most advanced protophones (canonical babbling) relative to periods without vocal play or without turn-taking. Notably, periods of turn taking showed even more canonical babbling than periods of vocal play. We conclude that endogenous motivation drives infants’ tendencies to explore and display a great number of speech-like vocalizations, but that social interaction drives the production of the most speech-like forms. The results inform our previously published proposal that the human infant has been naturally selected to explore protophone production and that the exploratory inclination in our hominin ancestors formed a foundation for language.

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Authors
Long, H. L., Ramsay, G., Griebel, U., Bene, E. R., Bowman, D. D., Burkhardt-Reed, M. M., & Oller, D. K.
Affiliations
  • University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
  • Emory University (US)
  • Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (AT)
  • University of Memphis (US)
Corresponding author
  • Long, Helen L.
  • Ramsay, Gordon
  • Griebel, Ulrike
  • Bene, Edina R.
  • Bowman, Dale D.
  • Burkhardt-Reed, Megan M.
  • Oller, D. Kimbrough
ORCID
Venue
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2022-12-30
Volume
17
Issue
12
Pages
e0279395
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0279395
PMC
PMC9803194
OpenAlex
W4313316008
Cited by
33
References
106
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 7
FWCI
9.52
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01DC015108)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (P50MH100029)
  • National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32HD007489, U54HD090256)
  • Plough Foundation of Memphis
  • the Holly Lane Foundation
  • Marcus Foundation
  • the Woodruff-Whitehead Foundation
  • the Georgia Research Alliance
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
  • Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
Keywords
origin of language, canonical babbling, infant vocalizations, turn-taking, intrinsic motivation, social interaction, speech development, language evolution
MeSH terms
Social Interaction, Humans, Infant, Language, Language Development, Speech, Speech Disorders

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

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