ADULT PREFERENCES FOR SYLLABIC VOCALIZATIONS - GENERALIZATIONS TO PARITY AND NATIVE LANGUAGE

It was recently found that the quality of 3-month-old vocalizations had the power to increase adults' perceptions of the infant as a social partner (Bloom & Lo, 1990). Adults rated ''syllabic'' infants as being more pleasant, friendly, fun, likeable, and cuddly. In this experiment, we asked whether characteristics of the listener (parity and native language) interacted with the effect of vocal quality on adult perceptions. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that, controlling for child-care experience, parents and non-parents do not differ in their preference for infants who produced syllabic sounds. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that Canadians and Italians do not differ in preferring syllabic over vocalic vocalization but that, for Canadians, the preference is stronger. These studies foster the notion that long before speech-in fact, before speech sounds-different qualities of the infant noncry vocalizations differentially carry meaning to the adult.