The Tuning of Human Neonates' Preference for Speech

Human neonates prefer listening to speech compared to many nonspeech sounds, suggesting that humans are born with a bias for speech. However, neonates' preference may derive from properties of speech that are not unique but instead are shared with the vocalizations of other species. To test thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChild development Vol. 81; no. 2; pp. 517 - 527
Main Authors Vouloumanos, Athena, Hauser, Marc D., Werker, Janet F., Martin, Alia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.03.2010
Wiley-Blackwell
Subjects
Acoustic Stimulation
Animal vocalization
Animals
Arousal
Attention
Auditory Perception
Auditory Stimuli
Babies
Biological and medical sciences
Child Development
Choice Behavior
Cognition & reasoning
Comparative Analysis
Developmental psychology
EMPIRICAL ARTICLES
Evaluation Methods
Female
Follow-Up Studies
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Infant, Newborn - psychology
Infants
Language acquisition
Language Development
Listening
Macaca mulatta
Male
Monkeys
Neonates
Newborn babies
Newborn. Infant
Newborns
Perception
Preferences
Primates
Primatology
Psychology, Child
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rhesus monkeys
Sound
Sound pitch
Sound Spectrography
Species
Speech
Speech Communication
Speech Perception
Vocalization
Vocalization, Animal
Human
Hearing
Newborn
Language
Perception
Infant
Speech
Cognition
Verbal perception
Stimulus preference
Experimental study
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Summary:Human neonates prefer listening to speech compared to many nonspeech sounds, suggesting that humans are born with a bias for speech. However, neonates' preference may derive from properties of speech that are not unique but instead are shared with the vocalizations of other species. To test this, thirty neonates and sixteen 3-month-olds were presented with nonsense speech and rhesus monkey vocalizations. Neonates showed no preference for speech over rhesus vocalizations but showed a preference for both these sounds over synthetic sounds. In contrast, 3-month-olds preferred speech to rhesus vocalizations. Neonates' initial biases minimally include speech and monkey vocalizations. These listening preferences are sharpened over 3 months, yielding a species-specific preference for speech, paralleling findings on infant face perception.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/WNG-6W9B60GX-5
ArticleID:CDEV1412
istex:E356997CC649565CA025A8EAC4925B85AE56D858
Funding was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Centre for Research in Language, Mind and Brain, and the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture to A. V.; by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and 21st Century grants to M. D. H.; by NSERC, the Canada Research Chair Program, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation to J. F. W., and by an NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award to A. M. M. D. H.’s research was also funded by gifts from J. Epstein and S. Shuman. We thank Erin Moon, Marisa Cruickshank, and Vivian Pan for help with data collection. For comments on earlier versions of the manuscript, we thank Steven Pinker and especially Gary Marcus. We are especially grateful to participating parents and infants.
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ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
1467-8624
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01412.x