Infant-directed speech enhances recognizability of individual mothers’ voices

Adult speakers commonly alter their voices when talking to infants, giving rise to an infant-directed speech (IDS) style. Here we tested the effects of infant-directed speech on the recognizability of a speaker’s voice. 10 Swiss-German mothers were recorded talking to their infants IDS and talking t...

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Veröffentlicht in:The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2019-03, Vol.145 (3), p.1766-1766
Hauptverfasser: Kathiresan, Thayabaran, Dilley, Laura, Townsend, Simon, Shi, Rushen, Daum, Moritz, Arjmandi, Meisam K., Dellwo, Volker
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Adult speakers commonly alter their voices when talking to infants, giving rise to an infant-directed speech (IDS) style. Here we tested the effects of infant-directed speech on the recognizability of a speaker’s voice. 10 Swiss-German mothers were recorded talking to their infants IDS and talking to an adult experimenter (in adult-directed speech, ADS). We studied the indexical properties using Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). By using an unsupervised K-means clustering algorithm, the segmental 13-dimensional MFCCs were clustered and reduced to two dimensions using Principal Component Analysis. Results showed that the relative area of IDS occupied in the 13-dimensional space was significantly larger compared to the area occupied by ADS. A supervised language-independent Gaussian Mixture Model revealed that this expansion benefitted the recognizability of mothers’ voices. This means that the higher indexical variability in IDS fosters recognition of individual mothers. Results are consistent with the view that IDS may have evolved in part as a strategy to promote indexical signaling by a mother to her offspring, thereby promoting mother-infant attachment and fostering offspring survival.
ISSN:0001-4966
1520-8524
DOI:10.1121/1.5101471