Baby Talk is Universal
by Lauren Nemec
A recent study shows that verbal communication towards infants - or baby talk - translates well across cultures.
In the study, English-speaking women were recorded 'talking' to both children and adults, in approving, disapproving, comforting and attentive manners. The tapes were played for non-English speaking villagers in Ecuador, who were able to distinguish with impressive accuracy the difference between the women speaking to an adult and speaking to a child. In the case of baby talk, the Ecuadorians could even easily determine the mother's manner of speaking.
The report, published in the "Psychological Science" journal.
MSNBC's story on these research findings, "Baby talk knows no language barriers".
A separate study also published recently at the University of Chicago showed researchers that monkeys also use a form of baby talk with infants. Like humans, monkeys use of baby talk consists of vocal cues including tone, volume and pitch that result in a sing-song like quality.
Chicago-Sun Times story on these research findings, "Goochie-goo: Monkeys use baby talk".
A recent study shows that verbal communication towards infants - or baby talk - translates well across cultures.In the study, English-speaking women were recorded 'talking' to both children and adults, in approving, disapproving, comforting and attentive manners. The tapes were played for non-English speaking villagers in Ecuador, who were able to distinguish with impressive accuracy the difference between the women speaking to an adult and speaking to a child. In the case of baby talk, the Ecuadorians could even easily determine the mother's manner of speaking.
The report, published in the "Psychological Science" journal.
MSNBC's story on these research findings, "Baby talk knows no language barriers".
A separate study also published recently at the University of Chicago showed researchers that monkeys also use a form of baby talk with infants. Like humans, monkeys use of baby talk consists of vocal cues including tone, volume and pitch that result in a sing-song like quality.
Chicago-Sun Times story on these research findings, "Goochie-goo: Monkeys use baby talk".
Labels: Language Learning, Language News, Lauren Nemec
posted by Lauren Nemec at
8:56 AM
2 Comments:
It's funny. I've read about both of these studies before. See for example the date here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/s576377.htm
I think there are also a few books about baby talk. Oh well.
I read your archives and added you to my blogroll, so...hi. :)
Hi hagit,
Thanks for reading and for the nice note- I appreciate it!
Child language development and 'baby talk' seem to be hot research topics at many universities around the world. The transcript you provided from the Aussie studies is really interesting and has a lot of the same findings as the study I wrote about.
Denis Burnham sums up this concept well when he says, "the characteristics of infant-directed speech are very similar across a whole range of languages, whether they’re tonal languages or pitch-accented languages, or stress-timed languages, or syllable-timed languages, their characteristics are very similar across a lot of languages, which seems to suggest that there’s some sort of universal characteristics there in infant-directed speech".
I think it's fascinating that, no matter where we come from or what our backgrounds are, many of the things we as humans do are universal.
Anyway, thanks again for reading and adding my humble blog to your blogroll. Would you like to post a link to your blog or blogroll?
Cheers,
Lauren
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