Work

Volubility of the human infant: Effects of parental interaction (or lack of it)

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: Although parental volubility, or amount of talk, has received considerable recent attention, infant volubility has received comparatively little attention despite its potential significance for communicative risk status and later linguistic and cognitive outcomes. Volubility of 16 typically developing infants from 2 to 11 months of age was longitudinally investigated in the present study across three social circumstances: parent talking to infant, parent not talking to infant and parent talking to interviewer while the infant was in the room. Results indicated that volubility was least in the Interview circumstance. There were no significant differences in volubility between the parent Talk and No Talk circumstances. Volubility was found to reduce with age. These results suggest that infants vocalise in a variety of circumstances, even when no one talks to or interacts with them. The presence of a stranger or perhaps overhearing adults speaking to each other, however, may significantly reduce infant volubility.

Source: Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

DOI: 10.3109/02699206.2016.1147082

Authors: Suneeti Nathani Iyer, Hailey Denson, Nicole Lazar, D. Kimbrough Oller

Institutions: University of Georgia, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, University of Memphis

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders