From babble to words: Infants’ early productions match words and objects in their environment

Laing, Catherine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8022-2655 and Bergelson, Elika 2020. From babble to words: Infants’ early productions match words and objects in their environment. Cognitive Psychology 122 , 101308. 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101308

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Abstract

Infants’ early babbling allows them to engage in proto-conversations with caretakers, well before clearly articulated, meaningful words are part of their productive lexicon. Moreover, the well-rehearsed sounds from babble serve as a perceptual ‘filter’, drawing infants’ attention towards words that match the sounds they can reliably produce. Using naturalistic home recordings of 44 10–11-month-olds (an age with high variability in early speech sound production), this study tests whether infants’ early consonant productions match words and objects in their environment. We find that infants’ babble matches the consonants produced in their caregivers’ speech. Infants with a well-established consonant repertoire also match their babble to objects in their environment. Our findings show that infants’ early consonant productions are shaped by their input: by 10 months, the sounds of babble match what infants see and hear.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0010-0285
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	7 July 2020
Date of Acceptance:	26 September 2019
Last Modified:	09 Nov 2023 18:55
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/133194

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