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Age-related changes in acoustic modifications of Mandarin maternal speech to preverbal infants and five-year-old children: a longitudinal study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2009

HUEI-MEI LIU ,
FENG-MING TSAO  and
PATRICIA K. KUHL
HUEI-MEI LIU*
Affiliation:
Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University
FENG-MING TSAO
Affiliation:
Department of PsychologyNational Taiwan University
PATRICIA K. KUHL
Affiliation:
Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Huei-Mei Liu, Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, TAIWAN. e-mail: liumei@ntnu.edu.tw
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Abstract

Acoustic-phonetic exaggeration of infant-directed speech (IDS) is well documented, but few studies address whether these features are modified with a child's age. Mandarin-speaking mothers were recorded while addressing an adult and their child at two ages (0 ; 7–1 ; 0 and 5 ; 0) to examine the acoustic-phonetic differences between IDS and child-directed speech (CDS). CDS exhibits an exaggeration pattern resembling that of IDS – expanded vowel space, longer vowels, higher pitch and greater lexical tone differences – when compared to ADS. Longitudinal analysis demonstrated that the extent of acoustic exaggeration is significantly smaller in CDS than in IDS. Age-related changes in maternal speech provide some support for the hypothesis that mothers adjust their speech directed toward children as a function of the child's language ability.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , September 2009 , pp. 909 - 922
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by a research grant from the National Science Council, Taiwan, to Huei-Mei Liu (NSC 92-2413-H-003-072 & NSC 93-2413-H-003-019). Patricia K. Kuhl's contribution was supported by the Hsin-Yi Foundation of Taiwan and an NSF Science of Learning Center grant (0354453).

References

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