The function and evolution of child-directed communication

Humans communicate with small children in unusual and highly conspicuous ways (child-directed communication (CDC)), which enhance social bonding and facilitate language acquisition. CDC-like inputs are also reported for some vocally learning animals, suggesting similar functions in facilitating comm...

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Published inPLoS biology Vol. 20; no. 5; p. e3001630
Main Authors Schick, Johanna, Fryns, Caroline, Wegdell, Franziska, Laporte, Marion, Zuberbühler, Klaus, van Schaik, Carel P, Townsend, Simon W, Stoll, Sabine
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 06.05.2022
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Acoustics
Animal cognition
Animal Communication
Animals
Apes
Archaeology and Prehistory
Biology and Life Sciences
Child-directed speech
Children & youth
Communication
Communicative competence
Evolution
Hominidae
Human evolution
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Infant
Infants
Language acquisition
Language Development
Learning
Linguistics
Monkeys & apes
Native language acquisition
Pedagogy
People and Places
Physical Sciences
Social Sciences
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Summary:Humans communicate with small children in unusual and highly conspicuous ways (child-directed communication (CDC)), which enhance social bonding and facilitate language acquisition. CDC-like inputs are also reported for some vocally learning animals, suggesting similar functions in facilitating communicative competence. However, adult great apes, our closest living relatives, rarely signal to their infants, implicating communication surrounding the infant as the main input for infant great apes and early humans. Given cross-cultural variation in the amount and structure of CDC, we suggest that child-surrounding communication (CSC) provides essential compensatory input when CDC is less prevalent-a paramount topic for future studies.
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CPvS, SWT, and SS also contributed equally to this work.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.3001630