Relationship between Infant-Directed Speech and Word Segmentation - Research Paper Example

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is one of the most complex aspects of linguistics, one which many researchers have attempted to understand by conducting numerous studies on. These studies not only demonstrate the intricacy of the subject but also its intriguing nature. Infants exhibit different speech development, which makes it hard to make sound inferences on infant-directed speech (Aitchison, 1996:41). In this paper, the writer will examine the relationship between IDS and word segmentation, and provide critical arguments and relevant literature to support claims made regarding the research topic. The writer will also analyse different aspects of both concepts, and provide appropriate conclusions on their relationship. Research Question Does infant-directed speech aid infants’ word segmentation? Introduction Also known as caretaker speech, and informally as “mommy talk,” IDS is a central aspect of child development. Contrary to popular opinion, its influence is not restricted to language development alone. IDS also considerably improves the cognitive abilities of infants by encouraging them to use their senses and practice functions like grasping and holding (Aitchison, 1996:26). In the language development aspect, word segmentation is the dimension that attracts the most interest from researchers regarding IDS. Infants’ ability to segment words develops variably, and is influenced by a number of factors. However, IDS has so far been linked with many features of word dimension, such as recognition of repetitive words and comprehension of new words and phrases. Analysis Conceptual Framework When parents and minders talk to infants, they indoctrinate them in their dialect. They introduce them to novel phrases and terms that they will, inevitably, learn as they grow. However, research seems to show that depending on how early they are exposed to IDS, children can exhibit extremely contrasting proficiencies in language development and speech (Fabbro, 1999:46). Parents who involve their children in IDS as much as possible have reported better language and speech development, as well as refined cognitive abilities. According to Harley (2013:48), the impact of IDS on word segmentation can be better explained when we consider that it is relatively easy to manipulate the cognitive abilities of infants and children. Infants, specifically, adapt to new environments and habits depending on the extent and frequency with which they are exposed to them. For example, we can consider the dialects used by different parents when communicating with their children to show how IDS affects word segmentation. It is generally accepted that in regions where English is a second language, most infants are likely to learn their native language first before learning how to speak English. They are also more likely to learn how to recognise and segment words in their native dialect than English. Despite this, some isolate cases show that this phenomenon could depend on the nature of the IDS they are exposed to (Tallerman, 2012:93). For instance, some parents who speak English as their second language often restrict their IDS to English-oriented intonations and structures. This leads to faster mastery of English words and, consequently, faster assimilation of word segmentation. However, another observed feature is that the dialect used by parents must be infant-oriented if infants are to develop word segmentation abilities. One approach that has been cited as highly effective is repetition, or “follow-ups.” For instance, rather than strive to teach infants new words in their native language, parents can follow up on what their children are trying to say. If, for instance, an infant mumbles words insinuating food, the parent can repeat the word after the infant as a “confirmation” of its intentions. The parent can also utter the correct pronunciations of the word to show the infant how to spell it (Aitchison, 1996:52). This sends a message to the infant that guides the development of word segmentation in both words and part-words. It is worth noting that this concept is part of IDS, and is considerably influential in language development. IDS is generally more effective than ADS because it resembles what infants are used to. It creates a sense of comfort and security that they can use to develop their linguistic abilities. When it comes to word segmentation, the effectiveness of these two dimensions of speech is relative to the contexts and intentions with which they are practiced. IDS is ‘friendlier” to infants than ADS, so naturally it should be expected that their linguistic abilities (word segmentation) will develop faster with exposure to it (Frith & Hill, 2004:65). The same can be said on ADS; it is simply a case of using the right theory in the right situation. Speaking to an adult using IDS will cause misunderstanding and confusion, and is also likely to stunt the person’s linguistic development. The Brain Research shows that infants’ brains are “wired” to be more receptive to IDS. At their stage of development, the part of their brain (Broca’s area) that controls speech development and comprehension is as mature as their age. Between the ages of 0 and 12 months, the functionality of Broca’s area, in terms of speech development, is limited to IDS-oriented speech. Infants’ Broca’s area can only process speech that is compatible with its abilities at that stage of development (Ellis, 1994:68). Consequently, it is futile to expose infants to ADS when their brains lack the capacity to handle that kind of speech. As infants mature, the capacity and abilities of Broca’s area becomes more complex, making them more receptive to ADS. As they learn new words and phrases, Broca’s area becomes more powerful in terms of speech recognition and language development. Interestingly, there is evidence to show that exposure to IDS facilitates the development of Broca’s area in infants. This, in turn, facilitates a progressive and sound development of word segmentation abilities. Infants who are more exposed to IDS have far superior word segmentation abilities than those who are exposed to ADS. At this juncture, it is necessary to make reference to Pavlov’s classical conditioning theory, and use it to explain the impact of IDS on infants’ word segmentation (Turnball & Justice, 2013:29). Pavlov’s theory can be used to explain all elements of human psychology, from cerebral functions to speech. We can argue, in this scenario, that word segmentation is, like all human behaviour, just a trend of stimulus and response. Consequently, we have Broca’s area, infants, IDS, and word segmentation. The subjects are the infants and, by extension, Broca’s area. The variables are IDS and ADS, while the measured outcome is word segmentation. Since infants’ Broca’s area is quite rudimentary at their age, it leans more toward IDS than ADS, meaning that exposure to IDS enhances its functionality and development, while exposure to ADS has a reverse or null effect on its development (Traxler, 2012:31). Infants do not have the conscience to distinguish IDS or ADS,, but their brains can. Conditioning the Broca’s area by “supplying” it with the speech type it is familiar with improves its capacities and makes it more sensitive. Literature Review Previous studies suggest that it is possible to investigate whether infants group words faster from logical IDS than from logical ADS. Since word limits in speech are not always punctuated by lulls (in comparison to the white gaps in text) infants must employ other features of speech sequences to identify words in a logical speech. An example of this behaviour is the statistical composition of speech: syllable blends that constitute similar words usually occur simultaneously more frequently compared to syllable fusions transcending word limits (Tallerman, 2012:54). Infants are able to differentiate between syllable series with high and low intermediate likelihood and readily employ this form of statistical awareness to identify word constraints (Tallerman, 2012:57). (Aitchison, 1998:37). (Traxler, 2012:45). According to Harley (2013:16), the second dilemma has been the focus of many studies, and it is the one that is explored in this paper. Although circumstances in which both IDS and ADS may contain similar information could be uncommon in the natural environments of infants, comparing them in this manner facilitates better understanding of whether IDS is enabling (if it is) due to the fact that it is more informative, or whether it supports more effective learning even in cases where both ADS and IDS offer similar information (Aitchison, 1998:78). By juxtaposing the effectiveness of infants in segmenting IDS to their success in segmenting similar word from ADS, it is possible to establish whether the exaggerated rhythmic attributes of IDS enable the identification of statistical prompts to word limits (Fabbro, 1999:52). A discovery that infants more effectively employ statistical prompts in IDS than ADS (even in situations where both speech forms convey similar statistical signs) shows that it is possible to learn more than basically whether or not IDS enables learning (Tallerman, 2012:47). Such a finding may also create more opportunities to understand why IDS is enabling. The rhythm of IDS enables some dimension of language development – in this instance, word segmentation. While infants are able to distinguish between words and pseudo-words after being exposed to IDS in experiments comparing IDS and ADS in terms of their influence in word segmentation, they reveal no proof of this difference after being exposed to ADS (Aitchison, 1998:83). These findings show that infants effectively sectioned IDS but did not section ADS (Schachner & Hannon, 2011:17). Significantly, IDS does not offer more indications of word limits above the statistical indications available in both ADS and IDS. Benefits of IDS vis-à-vis ADS The rhythmic attributes of IDS seemingly help in the development of strictly statistical knowledge: the likelihoods with which syllables occurred together in series. According to Harley (2013:51), this process differs from those that have been earlier theorised to rationalise potentially facilitative impacts of IDS. Various analyses of speech have indicated that it could be more revealing than ADS. This implies that the composition of IDS may simplify the discovery of linguistic patterns more than ADS (Schachner & Hannon, 2011:34). For instance, the basic sentence makeup of IDS can assist infants in learning about specific features of word sequences. However, in experiments where the composition of IDS and ADS was similar and the languages used had similar word orders and sentence constitution, rather than being more informative, IDS helps infants in accessing information that is also contained in ADS. Such findings should not be interpreted to imply that IDS is not, in the natural habitat of infants, more informative (Harley, 2013:34). Rather, they insinuate an extra way in which IDS can be facilitative. Moreover, such findings do not suggest that infants cannot learn from ADS. Many experiments conducted in the 1980s and 1990s showed that infants are able to effectively partition completely repetitive speech sequences. Specifically, some experiments reveal that infants can section repetitive artificial speech on the basis of statistical prompts only. Experimental studies show that infants can successfully section ADS if they are exposed to more words and word sequences. As such, these findings do not show that infants cannot partition ADS; rather, they show that IDS can enable language development by facilitating more efficient learning (Harley, 2013:46). The enabling impact of IDS on word segmentation could be minimal. As a matter of fact, in communities in which adults ignore IDS, infants develop dialects perfectly well, although there could be other features of the language setting in these communities that offer an enabling impact identical to that of IDS. In spite of the fact that the enabling impact of IDS could be minimal, even a minute increase in the rate of initial acquisition may have considerable impacts on the eventual attributes of a learned culture (Traxler, 2012:63). Word segmentation is just one dimension of language development, and it is quite likely that IDS enables other attributes of language development. In addition, such findings potentially underestimate the enabling impacts of IDS because most of the IDSs are compared to ADS on a majority of the aspects that may make IDS more enabling (Fabbro, 1999:33). Summative Hypothesis Rather than protect infants from boredom in an experimental environment, IDS can optimise their focus on the logical speech itself and, consequently, to the statistical links between syllables (Fabbro, 1999:74). Preferably, to determine the statistical composition of each syllable as well as its concurrences with its preceding and following syllables. In some cases, infants who listened to IDS could easily recognise connections between syllables (and, therefore, to differentiate words and pseudo-words) because they lent more focus to the speech (Ellis, & Young, 1996:23). Based on this information, it is safe to hypothesise that infants in the IDS environment segmented the logical speech effectively while those who listened to ADS failed in the same task. Kaplan, Bachorowski, Smoski, and Hudenko In their study on the associative learning of infants pursuant to IDS and ADS, Kaplan, Bachorowski, Smoski, and Hudenko (2002) proposed a hypothesis similar to the one arrived at above. They determined that infants whose mothers were acutely depressed assimilated links between speech and faces easier when the speech contained normal IDS instead of types of variants of depressed mothers’ IDS, which is less rhythmically volatile than normal IDS. The authors also determined that the infants aged four months enjoyed greater success developing an association between IDS and a face than an association between ADS and a face (Kaplan, Bachorowski, Smoski, & Hudenko, 2002:269). The researchers also found that IDS may make infants aware of their environments and prepare them to recognise relations associations between events. This helps infants in understanding associations more easily. Sample Results for Experiments done Using 12 Sentences The listening times of 7-month-old infants, to words and pseudo words, post exposure to IDS and ADS. The listening times of 8-month-old infants, to words and pseudo words, post exposure to IDS and ADS. Conclusion Despite the fact that Kaplan et al.’s perspective is very contrasting, their hypothesis suits the experiments that have been conducted thus far because employing intermediate probabilities in segmenting words from coherent speech entails identifying the associated and less strongly associated syllables. All the hypotheses are relevant to the current data. As a result, experiments do not differentiate them. In spite of this, they do reveal that IDS assists infants to apply statistical knowledge more easily than ADS, even in circumstance where ADS and IDS have similar statistical construction. Consequently, these findings show that IDS can go beyond supplying infants with information not provided by ADS. IDS could also enable infants to assimilate more easily from information contained in speech (Aitchison, 1998:27). Consequently, these results offer a sound and compelling perspective of one of the avenues through which IDS enables word segmentation and perhaps other dimensions of language development. This paper shows that IDS has a positive impact on infants’ word segmentation. It also shows that in general, IDS has a greater impact on infants’ words segmentation compared to ADS. Finally, it is important to state that besides the normal concepts, close support is crucial in language development in infants. Parents and minders play a critical role in the rate at which infants develop their language. Since children’s cognitive abilities tend to develop as fast as their surroundings, parents and custodians have a responsibility to ensure that infants are exposed to as many sentences as possible. This will allow them to develop IDS as early as possible, and to acquire a firm understanding of their primary language before they can utter sentences. Parents can motivate their infants to develop strong IDS and language comprehension by speaking to them a simple and understandable way. References Aitchison, J. (1996) The seeds of speech: language origin and evolution, Cambridge, England, Cambridge University Press. Aitchison, J. (1998) The articulate mammal an introduction to psycholinguistics (4th ed.), London, Routledge. Ellis, A. & Young, A. (1996) Human cognitive neuropsychology: a textbook with readings (Augm. ed.), Hove, Psychology Press. Ellis, R. (1994) The study of second language acquisition, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Fabbro, F. (1999) The neurolinguistics of bilingualism: an introduction, Hove, Psychology Press. Fodor, J. (1983) The modularity of mind: an essay on faculty psychology, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press. Frith, U. & Hill, E. (Eds.) (2004) Autism mind and brain, London, Royal Society. Harley, T. (2013) The psychology of language from data to theory (4th ed.), Hove, East Sussex, UK, Psychology Press. Kaplan, P., Bachorowski, J., Smoski, M. & Hudenko, W. (2002) Infants of Depressed Mothers, Although Competent Learners, Fail to Learn in Response to Their Own Mothers Infant-Directed Speech, Psychological Science, vol. 13, no. 3, 268-271. Schachner, A. & Hannon, E. (2011) Infant-directed Speech Drives Social Preferences In 5-month-old Infants, Developmental Psychology, vol. 47, no. 1, 19-25. Tallerman, M. (2012) The Oxford handbook of language evolution, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Traxler, M. (2012) Introduction to psycholinguistics: understanding language science, Chichester, West Sussex, Wiley-Blackwell. Turnball, K. & Justice, L. (2013) Language development from theory to practice (2nd ed.), Harlow, Pearson Education Limited. Read More