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Golinkoff et al. (2015) examined the scientific literature covering “baby talk” or infant-directed speech (IDS) and condensed their findings into a short paper that highlights evidence for the perceptual and linguistic significance of IDS for early language acquisition, with a special focus on the social context that IDS occurs.
What is Infant-Directed Speech (IDS)?
Scientists have long observed how caregivers speak differently to children than to other adults. “Baby talk”, more formally known as infant-directed speech (IDS), is a specialized speech register characterized by a variety of properties such as a higher pitch range, simple vocabulary, and shorter utterances to name a few. The use of IDS is widespread: it is found across many cultures and used by both men and women and even by young children addressing infants.
Researchers have suggested that IDS is a language-learning tool that plays an important role in the development of language in early childhood, especially during infancy. It has been found that the total amount of speech heard by an infant is strongly related to language outcomes. However, beyond the quantity of speech, the quality of speech that infants are exposed to is of utmost importance. IDS in which the caregiver and child engage in “conversational duets” based on children’s interests helps to promote early language acquisition.
The Perceptual-Attentional Effects of IDS
From birth, infants prefer IDS over regular speech, otherwise known as adult-directed speech (ADS). IDS grabs infants’ attention and increases the salience of language input. This may be because of the positive emotions conveyed by IDS through exaggerated facial expressions and “happy talk”. When IDS does not reflect positive emotions infants are less likely to pay attention and engage in the associative learning that is required for language acquisition. Furthermore, the attentional effects of IDS are supported by neurological research and brain imaging studies that showed that IDS produces greater brain activation than ADS.
The Linguistic Effects of IDS
IDS helps infants acquire language in structural ways. IDS simplifies infants’ task of constructing different categories for vowels and also helps with the clarity of consonants as well. Basically, IDS helps infants discriminate between different sounds and identify different boundaries within continuous speech in their given language environment—this ability is referred to as speech segmentation. The exaggerated style of IDS highlights how speech “chunks” together and aids infants in organizing and remembering speech.
IDS is Used in a Social Context
Infants are always exposed to language in a social context. The term “social gating” is used to describe how infants learn language-specific knowledge during social interactions where they are exposed to language. Caregiver behavior that is contingent on the infants’ contribution to the “conversation” and involves the multimodal input (verbal, emotional, and physical cues) characteristic of IDS promotes early language acquisition. Language learning is based on the social relationship between the infant and the caregiver: the infant’s active participation in “conversation” and caregiver responsiveness to their behavior is critically important in early language acquisition.
At the Little Magpies Lab we are currently running two studies: “Shapes and Sounds” and “Dialects of English”. We are recruiting infants from 12- to 16-months-old and 18- to 24-months-old, respectively, for these studies! The ongoing “Dialects of English” study is especially relevant to the Golinkoff et al. (2015) paper that was discussed above in that it examines the IDS of different dialects of English and how it impacts infant language acquisition in different parts of the world. If you, or someone you know, is interested in participating in the research, please email us at magpies@ualberta.ca for more information. If you’d like to be contacted for future studies, we encourage you to sign up for the ChIRP list to be contacted when a new study is recruiting participants. Join our studies to help us uncover more about the fascinating processes behind infant language acquisition!
Nayeon Kim
May 2023
Linguistics & Psychology Student at the University of Alberta
References
References
Golinkoff, R. M., Can, D. D., Soderstrom, M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2015). (Baby) Talk to Me:
The Social Context of Infant-Directed Speech and Its Effects on Early Language Acquisition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(5), 339–344.
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