PREFERENCE FOR INFANT-DIRECTED OVER ADULT-DIRECTED SPEECH - EVIDENCE FROM 7-WEEK-OLD INFANTS

Two experiments were designed to assess 7-week-old infants' attentional and/or affective preference for infant-directed (ID) over adult-directed (AD) speech as delivered by both a male and female speaker. In Experiment 1, infants were tested in a sequential preferential looking procedure. There was no evidence of either attentional or affective preference. In Experiment 2, infants were tested using the infant-controlled habituation-dishabituation procedure. In this procedure, infants discriminated between ID and AD speech, but more importantly, they revealed a robust attentional preference for ID over AD speech regardless of speaker gender. For infants this young, this is the first demonstration of attentional preference for a male speaker's ID over AD speech and the first attempt to consider affective preference for ID speech. The implications of these results are discussed.