Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-pnlb5 Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-10-31T18:32:01.817Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From ‘ah’ to ‘bah’: social feedback loops for speech sounds at key points of developmental transition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2017

Julie GROS-LOUIS  and
Jennifer L. MILLER
Julie GROS-LOUIS*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, USA
Jennifer L. MILLER
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Julie Gros-Louis, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, 11 Seashore Hall E, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA. e-mail: julie-gros-louis@uiowa.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social feedback is a driving force for speech development. A recent study provided a key finding to explain how contingent responses influence developmental change: infant speech-related vocalizations are contingent on responses to prior speech-related vocalizations (Warlaumont et al., 2014). However, the study did not distinguish between different speech-related vocalizations, vowel-like (V) and consonant–vowel (CV) vocalizations, which is important because CV vocalizations are a precursor to words. The present study explored parents’ responses to infants’ vocalizations and infants’ subsequent vocal production at a point when vocalizations become more like adult speech. The relative proportion of CVs following contingent responses to CV did not differ between 10- and 12-months-olds; however, there was only a significant contingent relationship between responses to CV and subsequent CV production in 12-month-olds. Results suggest a developmental transition and a social feedback loop for the production of more developmentally advanced sounds when infants are learning their first words.

Information

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , May 2018 , pp. 807 - 825
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

A warm thank you to the children and families who participated. Thanks to Johanna Burdinie for project management. We also extend special thanks to members of the Infant Communicative Development Lab for their help with participant recruitment, testing, and/or data coding.

References

Bates, E., Benigni, L., Bretherton, I., Camaioni, L., & Volterra, V. (1979). The emergence of symbols: cognition and communication in infancy. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bloom, K., D'Odorico, L., & Beaumont, S. (1993). Adult preferences for syllabic vocalizations: generalizations to parity and native language. Infant Behavior and Development, 16, 109–20.Google Scholar
Bloom, K., Russell, A., & Wassenberg, K. (1987). Turn taking affects the quality of infant vocalizations. Journal of Child Language, 14, 211–27.Google Scholar
de Barbaro, K., Johnson, C. M., Forster, D., & Deák, G. O. (2013). Methodological considerations for investigating the micro-dynamics of social interaction development. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 5, 258–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D., & Pethick, S. J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59, v–173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldstein, M. H., King, A. P., & West, M. J. (2003). Social interaction shapes babbling: testing parallels between birdsong and speech. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, 8030–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldstein, M. H., & Schwade, J. A. (2008). Social feedback to infants’ babbling facilitates rapid phonological learning. Psychological Science, 19, 515–23.Google Scholar
Gros-Louis, J., West, M. J., Goldstein, M. H., & King, A. P. (2006). Mothers provide differential feedback to infants’ prelinguistic sounds. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 30, 509–16.Google Scholar
Gros-Louis, J., West, M. J., & King, A. P. (2014). Maternal responsiveness and the development of directed vocalizing in social interactions. Infancy, 19, 385–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gros-Louis, J., West, M. J., & King, A. P. (2016). The influence of interactive context on prelinguistic vocalizations and maternal responses. Language Learning and Development, 12(3), 280–94.Google Scholar
Hayes, A. F., & Krippendorff, K. (2007). Answering the call for a standard reliability measure for coding data. Communication Methods and Measures, 1, 77–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review, 26, 55–88.Google Scholar
Hsu, H. C., & Fogel, A. (2001). Infant vocal development in a dynamic mother–infant communication system. Infancy, 2, 87–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsu, H. C., Fogel, A., & Cooper, R. B. (2000). Infant vocal development during the first 6 months: speech quality and melodic complexity. Infant and Child Development, 9, 1–16.Google Scholar
Keller, H., & Schölmerich, A. (1987). Infant vocalizations and parental reactions during the first four months of life. Developmental Psychology, 23, 62–7.Google Scholar
Lausberg, H., & Sloetjes, H. (2009). Coding gestural behavior with the NEUROGES-ELAN system. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 41, 841–9.Google Scholar
Locke, J. L. (1996). Why do infants begin to talk? Language as an unintended consequence. Journal of Child Language, 23, 251–68.Google Scholar
Locke, J. L. (2001). First communion: the emergence of vocal relationships. Social Development, 10, 294–308.Google Scholar
Masataka, N., & Bloom, B. (1994). Acoustic properties that determine adults’ preferences for 3-month-old infant vocalizations. Infant Behavior and Development, 17, 461–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, J. L. (2014). Effects of familiar contingencies on infants’ vocal behavior in new communicative contexts. Developmental Psychobiology, 56, 1518–27.Google Scholar
Miller, J. L., & Gros-Louis, J. (2013). Socially guided attention influences infants’ communicative behavior. Infant Behavior and Development, 36, 627–34.Google Scholar
Nathani, S., Ertmer, D. J., & Stark, R. E. (2006). Assessing vocal development in infants and toddlers. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 20, 351–69.Google Scholar
Nicely, P., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Bornstein, M. H. (1999). Mothers’ attuned responses to infant affect expressivity promote earlier achievement of language milestones. Infant Behavior and Development, 22, 557–68.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K. (2000). The emergence of the speech capacity. Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., & Basinger, D. (2001). Intuitive identification of infant vocal sounds by parents. Developmental Science, 4, 49–60.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Neal, A. R., & Cobo-Lewis, A. B. (1998). Late onset canonical babbling: a possible early marker of abnormal development. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 103, 249–65.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Neal, A. R., & Schwartz, H. K. (1999). Precursors to speech in infancy: the prediction of speech and language disorders. Journal of Communication Disorders, 32, 223–45.Google Scholar
Olson, J., & Masur, E. F. (2013). Mothers respond differently to infants’ gestural versus nongestural communicative bids. First Language, 33, 372–87.Google Scholar
Rollins, P. R. (2003). Parents’ contingent comments to 9-month-old infants: relationships with later language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 221–34.Google Scholar
Spencer, J. P., & Perone, S. (2008). Defending qualitative change: the view from dynamical systems theory. Child Development, 79, 1639–47.Google Scholar
Stoel-Gammon, C. (1998). The role of babbling and phonology in early linguistic development. In Wetherby, A. M., Warren, S. F., & Reichle, J. (Eds.), Transitions in prelinguistic communication (pp. 87–110). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.Google Scholar
Stoel-Gammon, C. (2011). Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children. Journal of Child Language, 38, 1–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Bornstein, M. H., & Baumwell, L. (2001). Maternal responsiveness and children's achievement of language milestones. Child Development, 72, 748–67.Google Scholar
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Song, L., Smith Leavell, A., Kahana-Kalman, R., & Yoshikawa, H. (2012). Ethnic differences in mother–infant language and gestural communications are associated with specific skills in infants. Developmental Science, 15, 384–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warlaumont, A., Richards, J. A., Gilkerson, J., & Oller, D. K. (2014). A social feedback loop for speech development and its reduction in autism. Psychological Science, 25, 1314–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
White, D. J., King, A. P., Cole, A., & West, M. J. (2002). Opening the social gateway: early vocal and social sensitivities in brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater). Ethology, 108, 23–37.Google Scholar