Infants' response to the audible and visible properties of the human face: II. Discrimination of differences between singing and adult-directed speech.
Human infants' responsiveness to the audible and visible features of human faces was studied by habituating them to a person speaking a prepared script in an adult-directed manner and then administering a series of separate test trials where a person could be seen, heard, or seen and heard singing. When habituated to a female person speaking in an adult-directed manner and tested with a singing female 4, 6, and 8-month-old infants responded to the audible, visible, and bimodal changes, whereas 3-month-old infants only responded to the visual and bimodal changes. In contrast, when habituated to a male person speaking in an adult-directed manner and tested with a singing female, all age groups discriminated all three types of changes. These findings demonstrate that infants are responsive to differences between low- and high-prosody content inherent in both the facial and vocal characteristics of the human face and that, whereas responsiveness to the visible and bimodal features associated with differences between adult-directed speech and singing is present as early as 3 months of age, responsiveness to the audible features emerges between 3 and 4 months of age depending on whether gender differences are present as well.
Lewkowicz
D J
DJ
New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, Staten Island, NY 10314, USA.
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009146:Music / Q000523:psychology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012737:Sex Factors; D016037:Single-Blind Method; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014831:Voice