The speech register that adults especially caregivers use when interacting with infants and toddlers, that is, infant-directed speech (IDS) or baby talk, has been reported to facilitate language development throughout the early years. However, the neural mechanisms as well as why IDS results in such a developmental faciliatory effect remain to be…

This study examines correlations between the prosody of infant-directed speech (IDS) and children's vocabulary size. We collected longitudinal speech data and vocabulary information from Dutch mother-child dyads with children aged 18 (N = 49) and 24 (N = 27) months old. We took speech context into consideration and distinguished between prosody…

Purpose: Autistic individuals often face challenges perceiving and expressing emotions, potentially stemming from differences in speech prosody. Here we explore how autism diagnoses between groups, and measures of social competence within groups may be related to, first, children's speech characteristics (both prosodic features and amount of…

Purpose: Talkers adapt their speech according to the demands of their listeners and the communicative context, enhancing the properties of the signal (pitch, intensity) and/or properties of the code (enhancement of phonemic contrasts). This study asked how mothers adapt their child-directed speech (CDS) in ways that might serve the immediate goals…

Cross-linguistically, statements and questions broadly differ in syntactic organization. To learn the syntactic properties of each sentence type, learners might first rely on non-syntactic information. This paper analyzed prosodic differences between infant-directed "wh"-questions and statements to determine what kinds of cues might be…

Quantifier spreading (Q-spreading), children's incorrect falsification of a universally-quantified sentence based on an 'extra-object' picture, may persist beyond childhood, and children adhere to Q-spreading without changing responses throughout testing. We examined the error patterns across wider age groups (aged 4-79) with a picture-sentence…

Variegation - the presence of more than one supraglottal consonant per word - is a key challenge for children as they increase their expressive vocabulary toward the end of the single-word period. Here we consider the prosodic structures of target words and child forms in English, Finnish, French, Japanese and Mandarin to determine whether…

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to examine whether there is a listening preference for child-directed speech (CDS) over backward speech in moderate-preterm infants (MPIs). Method: Eighteen MPIs of gestational age of 32.0 weeks (range: 32-34.06 weeks), chronological age of 8.09 months, and maturation age of 6.48 months served as the…

Child-directed language can support language learning, but how? We addressed two questions: (1) how caregivers prosodically modulated their speech as a function of word familiarity (known or unknown to the child) and accessibility of referent (visually present or absent from the immediate environment); (2) whether such modulations affect…

Voice onset time (VOT) of aspirated stop consonants is marked by variability and systematicity in adult speech production. The present study investigated variability and systematicity of voiceless aspirated stop VOT from 161 two- to five-year-old talkers of American English and Cantonese. Overall, many aspects of child VOT productions parallel…

Pragmatics lies at the point where language meets the social world and encompasses both the linguistic and the social dimensions of communication. However, the relationship between pragmatic abilities, other language skills, and socio-cognitive aspects such as mentalizing is still a matter of wide debate. This study sets out to investigate the…

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is phonetically distinct from adult-directed speech (ADS): It is typically considered to have special prosody--like higher pitch and slower speaking rates--as well as unique speech sound properties, for example, more breathy, hyperarticulated, and/or variable consonant and vowel articulation. These phonetic features…

Studies on young children's comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interpreting object pronouns, even when reflexive interpretation is already adult-like. Compared to resolving reflexives, linking pronouns to a referent is considered a more "intensive" process, because it also involves non-syntactic factors like…

The study used naturalistic data on the production of nominal prefixes in the Otopamean language Northern Pame (autonym: Xi'iuy) to test Whole Word (constructivist) and Minimal Word (prosodic) theories for the acquisition of inflection. Whole Word theories assume that children store words in their entirety; Minimal Word theories assume that…

Cross-linguistic studies have reported that prosodic pattern awareness (e.g., lexical stress and lexical tone) is more important to reading acquisition than phonological awareness. However, few longitudinal studies have been conducted to explore the relations between these variables. This study examined preschoolers' pitch discrimination, prosodic…