Characteristics of Prelinguistic Vocalizations that Facilitate Social Feedback

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究旨在调查学龄前婴儿与照顾者之间的沟通发展，以更好地了解早期社会互动如何促进语言学习。PI过去的研究表明，照顾者对语言前发声（即咿呀学语）的偶然反应对婴儿的言语和语言发展有直接和长期的促进作用。尽管早期照顾者的反应对婴儿学习的重要性，婴儿发声的特点，影响照顾者的反应是未知的。本研究采用回放范式，这是一种在动物交流研究中广泛使用的方法。在回放范式中，将预先录制好的听觉或视觉信号呈现给个体，并测量其反应。应用于人类交流发展，照顾者会对预先录制的不熟悉婴儿的声音和动作的视听回放作出反应。婴儿发声的声学质量将被操纵，以系统地检查他们对成人反应的影响。项目1将开发几个响应措施，并验证回放范式作为父母行为的衡量标准。为了评估反应测量的有效性，将父母对回放刺激的反应与他们对自己的婴儿在游戏中的反应进行比较。接下来，回放范式将用于指定引起父母反应的语言前发声的声学特征。项目二将

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research will investigate the development of communication between prelinguistic infants and caregivers to better understand how early social interactions facilitate language learning. The PI's past research has shown that caregivers' contingent responses to prelinguistic vocalizations (i.e. babbling) have both immediate and long-term facilitative effects on infants' speech and language development. Despite the importance of early caregiver responses for infant learning, the characteristics of infant vocalizations that influence caregiver responsiveness are unknown. The proposed studies utilize a playback paradigm, which is a method widely used in studies of animal communication. In a playback paradigm, prerecorded auditory or visual signals are presented to an individual, whose reaction is measured. As applied to human communicative development, caregivers will react to prerecorded audiovisual playbacks of unfamiliar infants' vocalizations and actions. The acoustic qualities of infants' vocalizations will be manipulated to systematically examine their effects on the responses of adults. Project 1 will develop several response measures and validate the playback paradigm as a measure of parental behavior. To assess the validity of the response measures, parents' reactions to the playback stimuli will be compared with their responses to their own infants during play. Next, the playback paradigm will be used to specify the acoustic features of prelinguistic vocalizations that elicit parents' responses. Project 2 will assess the role of caregiving experience on responsiveness. First, adults with varying levels of caregiving experience will be tested in the playback paradigm. The responsiveness of childless adults with high or low levels of caregiving experience will be compared with that of parents with one or multiple children. Project 2 will also examine changes in maternal responsiveness across the birth transition. In many mammals, maternal responsiveness to the acoustic signals of young undergoes dramatic change around the time of birth, but the role of caregiver experience in responding to non-cry prelinguistic vocalizations has yet to be determined. The playback paradigm introduces a new experimental tool for research on early communicative development. By investigating the effects of prelinguistic vocalizations on caregivers' behavior, the proposed studies will improve our understanding of the function of immature sounds in constructing social interactions that facilitate advances in vocal learning. Assessing the ways in which early vocal learning is socially embedded is an important step in understanding the earliest stages of communication and language development. The playback paradigm could eventually be used to improve parent-infant communication in circumstances where early vocal development is disrupted, for example in Down syndrome or autism. By simulating interactions with infants whose vocal development is affected by developmental disorders, the playback paradigm could become a useful intervention tool.