Infant vocalisations (5)

Question 1

Methodological constraints

Answer 1

• record infant vocalisations and take a snapshot … not representative of whole speech signal
• monotonous to record whole speech signal
• need to do inter-rater reliability

Question 2

Burder et al (2008)

Answer 2

• predominance of ‘modal’ phonation in infants
• non modal = loft register (high freq.) and bi phonation
• variability between and within children
• 3 early categories:
  1. vowels (mid pitch, full vowels or quasi vowels)
  2. squeals (high pitch)
  3. growls (low pitch/ mid pitch)

Question 3

Iyer and Oller (2008)

Answer 3

• F0 = infants higher and more variable than adults
• infants have a higher larynx
• infants with hearing loss have a more variable F0 than TD infants because of less auditory feedback so there is a more variable pitch range

Question 4

Structure of infant vocal tract

Answer 4

• overlapping pharynx and nasopharynx in young infants
• small vocal tract cavity restricts tongue movement
• raised larynx
• physiological constraints effects vocalisations until 7 months old

Question 5

Oller (1980)

Answer 5

Classification of prelinguistic production (infra phonology)

• 1-4 months = primitive articulation stage. Vocal production incorporates articulator movements at back of vocal tract and tongue and epiglottal contact with soft palate used to produce stop consonants
• 3-8 months = expansion/exploratory stage. Vocal production more fully open, fully resonant sounds produced, slow sequence of CV articulation with long transitions and individual isolated symbols
• 5-10 months = canonical syllable stage. Faster transitions leading to canonical syllable stage. Repetition of CV.

Question 6

Oller et al (2013)

Answer 6

• functional flexibility - ability to produce a set of sounds with a variable meaning e.g. ‘I got a B for my essay’ - joy or anger
• intonation indicates mood or emotion (prosody)
• 3 types of vocalisations occur within full range of expression at 3-4 months e.g. squeals, vowel-like sounds and growls
• BUT infant cry and laughter shows functional stability
• cry = negative
• laugh = positive

METHOD
- 9 infants at 3 different stages in first year of life and looked at parent and child interaction and coded for facial expressions e.g. smiling and grimacing

RESULTS

• most vocalisations are neutral - reflected different states of mind
• cry and laughter are highly related - pos and neg
• squeal, vacant and growl are very variable and neutral

Question 7

McCune and Viham (2001)

Answer 7

• earliest stable consonants are stops and nasals involving simple raising and lowering of the jaw
• distinct patterns in produced consonants
• nasals and stops early on in babbling

Question 8

Fromkin (2001)

Answer 8

• early stages of babbling are universal

- the 12 most frequent consonants of the world’s languages comprise 95% of all consonants produced in early babbling

Question 9

Davis and MacNeilage (1995)

Answer 9

• frame/content theory of early speech organisation, early speech dominated by cycles of mandibular oscillation - the starting tongue position determines both consonant and vowels
• infants babbling - jaw up and down
• tongue position seems to matter a lot

Question 10

McCune and Vihman (2001)

Answer 10

• infant gains greater voluntary control over consonant articulation - concept of vocal motor schemes (VMS), production of a lot of occurrences of a given consonant in each of the 3/4 successive 30min observational sessions, consistency and stability in production
• correlational relationship between production and later development
• correlation between no. of consistent VMS produced and no. of words produced when producing language - later stages
• significant correlation between age/ rate of VMS and no. of referential words produced at 16 months - close interaction between phonetic progress and development of a lexicon
• greater VMS = greater early word production
• children base words on early vocal repertoire

Question 11

Baysson-Bardies (1993)

Answer 11

• influence of ambient language:
• Nigerian = VCV
• French = CVCV

Question 12

Meltzoff et al (2009)

Answer 12

• Chinese infants produce Chinese tones

Question 13

Social interaction effecting infant vocalisation

Answer 13

• parental behaviour influences infant responsiveness

- infant behaviour influences caregiver responsiveness

Question 14

Blooma nd Lo (1990)

Answer 14

• adults show a preference for 3 month olds
• syllabic > vocalic
• attractive syllabic > non attractive syllabic

Question 15

Beumont and Bloom (1993)

Answer 15

• adults give higher ratings to syllabic babbling, even between boys and girls

Question 16

Grous-Louis et al (2006)

Answer 16

• unstructured play session
• 10 month old infant
• mothers responded with vocal feedback compared to interactive responses
• e.g. smile when an infant makes a sound
• e.g. vowel like sound/ consonant vowel
• feedback guides vocalisation development

Question 17

Goldstein et al (2003)

Answer 17

• 8 month old mother-child
• yolked social groups - not directly responding to infant behaviour
• contingent social group - direct response
• contingent = rapid restructuring and incorporating phonological patterns from caregiver speech
• non-contingent feedback did not restructure
• discover babbling patterns using generalisations

Question 18

Pattern et al (2014)

Answer 18

• some evidence of late onset or qualitative differences in babbling infants with hearing impairment and speech and language disorders
• retrospective study;
• late onset canonical babbling in those who were later diagnosed with autism (cause of effect?)
• 23/37 diagnosed with ASD
• therefore, not a predictor of later ASD

Question 19

Oller et al (2010)

Answer 19

• diagnosis
• day-long audio recordings collected naturally
• differentiated TD and autism/ speech and language difficulties
• automated analysis should be used
• TD = more canonical
• autistic = shorter duration of utterances
• objective evaluation (+)
• identify and treat (+)
• higher accuracy (+)

Question 20

Huckvale et al (2009)

Answer 20

• KLAIR - a virtual infant for spoken language acquisition research
• records caregiver interaction
• caregivers learn through interaction, not passive observation
• encourages parents to practice interaction