Factors Influencing Infant Perception of Infant-directed Speech

长期以来，我们用一种特殊的方式与婴幼儿交谈，这是有记录的。这通常被称为“婴儿语”，但研究人员将其称为婴儿指导的言语(IDS)。几十年的研究表明，入侵检测系统的许多特征有助于婴儿学习语言，最显著的是通过吸引他们对语言的注意，婴儿更喜欢听入侵检测系统而不是成人定向言语(ADS)。然而，许多关于入侵检测系统的研究都依赖于学习北美英语的婴儿，与其他语言相比，北美英语中的入侵检测系统被认为是入侵检测系统的一种特别极端的形式。此外，这项研究得出了非常复杂的结果，即婴儿对入侵检测系统的偏好是如何变化的，而不是发育。*我的长期研究重点是婴儿感知系统发育与环境之间的关系。为了实现这一目标，我目前的研究项目通过一系列实验研究，考察了入侵检测系统的特征和婴儿对入侵检测系统的偏好。第一个研究考察了照顾者对婴儿的讲话如何随着不同的任务(抚慰、玩耍、给物体贴标签)和婴儿的年龄而变化。第二项研究考察了婴儿对这些不同类型的入侵检测系统的偏好，这取决于a)产生入侵检测系统的任务，b)语音被记录时与之交谈的婴儿的年龄，以及c)被测试的婴儿的年龄。第三项研究考察了北美婴儿和成年人对其他语言的入侵检测系统的反应，跨语言的入侵检测系统在多大程度上可以被检测到，婴儿是否像喜欢北美英语的入侵检测系统一样喜欢其他语言的入侵检测系统？第四个实验将测试婴儿对语音识别系统的偏好，其中语音被人为操纵以改变语音的声学和结构特性。*这一系列实验将提供一个重要的窗口，让人们了解入侵检测系统在吸引婴儿在不同发育阶段和不同背景下对语音的注意方面所起的作用。它还将提供关于使用入侵检测系统的程度以及婴儿对入侵检测系统的偏好在多大程度上是人类语言的普遍属性以及入侵检测系统在不同语言之间存在差异的重要调查结果。由于卫生保健专业人员有时鼓励或不鼓励照顾者使用入侵检测系统，这些发现不仅对我们对婴儿发育的知觉和语言系统的基本了解有影响，而且将有助于为卫生保健政策提供信息。*我的工作也为各级受训人员提供了参与研究的实质性机会，包括本科生研究助理、荣誉学生、研究生和博士后研究人员。我实验室的学生对最先进的开放科学方法有了理解，准备跟随学术和研究岗位，或在更多应用环境中进行培训，奠定基本科学发现的基础。

It has long been documented that we speak to infants and young children in a special way. This is often called “babytalk”, but researchers refer to it as infant-directed speech (IDS). Several decades of research suggest that many of the characteristics of IDS are helpful for infants in learning language, most notably by drawing their attention to language infants prefer to listen to IDS over adult-directed speech (ADS). However, much of the research on IDS has relied on infants learning North American English, and IDS in North American English is known to be a particularly extreme form of IDS compared with other languages. In addition, the research has produced very mixed results about how infant preference for IDS changes over development.******My research in the long term focuses on the relationship between infants' developing perceptual system and the environment. In service of this goal, my current program of research examines the characteristics of IDS and infants' preference for IDS across a series of experimental studies. The first examines how caregivers' speech to infants varies as a function of different tasks (soothing, playing, labeling objects), and the infant's age. The second examines infant's preference for these different kinds of IDS depending on a) the task in which the IDS was produced, b) the age of the infant being spoken to when the speech was recorded and c) the age of the infant being tested. The third examines North American infants' and adults' responses to IDS produced in other languages to what extend is IDS detectable across languages, and do infants prefer IDS produced in other languages the same way they prefer North American English IDS? The fourth will test infants' preference for IDS where the speech has been artificially manipulated to vary acoustic and structural properties of the speech.******This series of experimental will provide an important window into the role that IDS plays in drawing infants' attention to speech across development and across different contexts. It will also provide key findings regarding the extent to which the use of IDS, and infant preference for IDS, are universal properties of human language, and the extent to which IDS varies across languages. Because health care professionals sometimes encourage or discourage the use of IDS by caregivers, these findings will have implications not only for our basic understanding of infants' developing perceptual and linguistic systems, but will be beneficial for informing health care policy.******My work also provides a substantive opportunity to engage with research for trainees at all levels, including undergraduate research assistants, honours students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Students from my laboratory emerge with an understanding of state-of-the-art open science approaches, prepared to follow academic and research-based positions, or pursue training in more applied settings with a grounding in basic scientific discovery.**