Factors Influencing Infant Perception of Infant-directed Speech

长期以来，我们以一种特殊的方式与婴儿和幼儿说话。这通常被称为“婴儿语”，但研究人员将其称为婴儿导向语音（IDS）。几十年的研究表明，IDS的许多特征有助于婴儿学习语言，最明显的是通过吸引他们的注意力，婴儿更喜欢听IDS而不是成人指导的语音（ADS）。然而，许多关于IDS的研究都依赖于婴儿学习北美英语，与其他语言相比，北美英语中的IDS被认为是IDS的一种特别极端的形式。此外，关于婴儿对IDS的偏好如何随着发展而变化，这项研究产生了非常复杂的结果。我的长期研究集中在婴儿知觉系统的发展与环境的关系。为了实现这一目标，我目前的研究计划通过一系列实验研究来考察IDS的特征和婴儿对IDS的偏好。第一个研究如何照顾者的语言不同的功能，不同的任务（安抚，玩耍，标记对象），和婴儿的年龄。第二个研究考察了婴儿对这些不同类型的IDS的偏好，这取决于a）IDS产生的任务，B）当语音被记录时被说话的婴儿的年龄和c）被测试的婴儿的年龄。第三篇文章考察了北美婴儿和成人对其他语言制作的IDS的反应，不同语言的IDS在多大程度上可以检测到，婴儿是否像喜欢北美英语IDS一样喜欢其他语言制作的IDS？第四个测试将测试婴儿对IDS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。这一系列的实验将提供一个重要的窗口，IDS在吸引婴儿的注意力在整个发展和不同的背景下的讲话中发挥的作用。它还将提供有关IDS的使用程度和婴儿对IDS的偏好的关键发现，是人类语言的普遍属性，以及IDS在不同语言之间的差异程度。由于卫生保健专业人员有时鼓励或不鼓励照顾者使用IDS，这些发现不仅对我们对婴儿发展感知和语言系统的基本理解有影响，而且对告知卫生保健政策也有好处。我的工作还提供了一个实质性的机会，参与各级学员的研究，包括本科研究助理，荣誉学生，研究生和博士后研究人员。从我的实验室的学生出现与国家的最先进的开放科学方法的理解，准备遵循学术和研究为基础的职位，或追求在更应用的设置与基础科学发现的基础培训。

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.**