Categorization of infant-directed speech: development from 4 to 6 months.
To extend a previous finding that 6-month-old infants categorized low-pass filtered infant-directed (ID) utterances, we examined a) 6-month-old infants' categorization of more naturalistic, unfiltered ID utterances and b) the developmental progression of ID-speech categorization. In Experiment 1, 6-month-olds heard seven different unfiltered tokens from one class of ID utterance (approving or comforting), followed by a novel token from either the same or an unfamiliar category. Infants recovered, responding only to the unfamiliar category token, suggesting that they categorized naturalistic ID utterances. Four-month-olds' categorization of filtered and unfiltered versions of the ID utterances was assessed in Experiments 2 and 4. Four-month-olds did not recover, responding to a test token from an unfamiliar class, suggesting that they did not categorize either filtered or unfiltered ID utterances. Experiment 3 demonstrated that 4-month-old infants' failure to categorize did not result from their inability to complete the procedure. These results suggest that infants' processing of ID speech changes from 4 to 6 months of age.
Spence
Melanie J
MJ
Box 830688, GR 4.1, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson 75083-0688, USA. mspence@utdallas.edu
Moore
David S
DS
D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology