Age-related changes in acoustic modifications of Mandarin maternal speech to preverbal infants and five-year-old children: a longitudinal study.
ABSTRACTAcoustic-phonetic exaggeration of infant-directed speech (IDS) is well documented, but few studies address whether these features are modified with a child's age. Mandarin-speaking mothers were recorded while addressing an adult and their child at two ages (0 ; 7-1 ; 0 and 5 ; 0) to examine the acoustic-phonetic differences between IDS and child-directed speech (CDS). CDS exhibits an exaggeration pattern resembling that of IDS - expanded vowel space, longer vowels, higher pitch and greater lexical tone differences - when compared to ADS. Longitudinal analysis demonstrated that the extent of acoustic exaggeration is significantly smaller in CDS than in IDS. Age-related changes in maternal speech provide some support for the hypothesis that mothers adjust their speech directed toward children as a function of the child's language ability.
Liu
Huei-Mei
HM
Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Tiawan. liumei@ntnu.edu.tw
Tsao
Feng-Ming
FM
Kuhl
Patricia K
PK
D000375:Aging; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013997:Time Factors