Adult judgments of age and linguistic differences in infant vocalization

Abstract

ABSTRACTCollege students judged the relative ages of pairs of vocalizations sampled either from a Chinese infant at 0; 6, 1; 0 and 1; 6 or from an American infant at the same ages. The judgments were 88% accurate, with the easiest judgments contrasting the 0; 6 and 1; 6 samples (96% accurate). With one exception, age contrasts for the Chinese infant were as easy to judge as those for the American infant. However, a second sample of college students was unable to judge the linguistic community of the vocalizer when age was held constant, whether the data were drawn from infant samples of 0; 6, 1; 0 or 1; 6 or from adults babbling to babies. These data led to speculations on the kinds of cues speakers of different languages use to discriminate infant vocalizations, and whether these cues are age-specific or language-specific. The data presently suggest the former, but the present study has methodological limitations, and generalizations are limited to one specific language contrast, English and Chinese.