Prosodic and sound-level features of child-directed speech support infants' phoneme discrimination, word segmentation, and word learning¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2016 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Laboratory studies show infants detect phonemic contrasts and segment words from CDS but not ADS, with large pitch contours aiding vowel discrimination while higher mean pitch alone hinders it. → Schwab Jessica F. 2016 q2 i? Prosodic prominence of word forms in parent speech is associated with earlier production of those words by the child. → Schwab Jessica F. 2016 (2)

Evidence¶

Schwab Jessica F. 2016¶

Schwab Jessica F., Lew-Williams Casey. (2016). Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1393

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review reports laboratory experiments in which infants detected phonemic differences only in CDS, and other work showing large pitch contours enable better vowel discrimination while speech with only higher mean pitch hinders it. No effect sizes are printed.

"1- to 4-month-old infants were able to detect phonemic differences between subtly distinct syllable sequences with contrastive middle syllables (e.g., ‘marana’ vs ‘malana’) only in CDS, which had a combination of higher mean pitch, larger amplitude, and longer syllable duration than ADS."

Schwab Jessica F. 2016 (2)¶

Schwab Jessica F., Lew-Williams Casey. (2016). Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1393

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review reports an observational analysis from the Human Speechome Project, in which a single child's input and output was recorded between 9 and 24 months, showing prosodic characteristics of word forms associated with age of production. No effect sizes are printed.

"Words that were louder, longer, and higher in pitch in parent speech were produced by the child at an earlier age."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Infants' preference for and learning benefit from child-directed speech change over development, with CDS advantages diminishing by the third year — related
• Structural features of child-directed speech—isolated words, short sentence frames, and repetition—facilitate word segmentation, processing, and word learning — related
• Infant look-away follows a U-shaped pattern of information content, consistent with maintaining intermediate rates of information absorption (Goldilocks effect) — related
• Social contingency in parent–child interaction supports early language learning, and infants actively elicit higher-quality input through a social feedback loop — related
• DLL infants can discriminate their two languages from early infancy, though within-language contrast discrimination trajectories show mixed findings — related