Distinguishing voices: Are infants’ abilities affected by age or language experience?

Abstract

We know surprisingly little about infants’ ability to encode voice information when listening to speech. Research with infants has focused on their ability to recognize their mother or fathers’ voice and distinguish it from an unfamiliar voice. However, communication consists of interactions with unfamiliar speakers as well. Adults are well able to extract information about the speakers gender, size, age, dialect, etc., even from short samples of an unfamiliar persons voice. In experiment 1, we tested 4- and 12-month-old English-learning infants on their ability to distinguish an unfamiliar male and female voice when listening to Hindi monosyllabic words. Results indicate that the 12-, but not the 4-month-olds can distinguish an unfamiliar male and female voice when listening to Hindi words. In experiment 2, we tested 4- and 12-month-old English-learning infants on their ability to distinguish an unfamiliar male and female voice when listening to English monosyllabic words. Now, both 12- and 4-month-olds are able to distinguish the voices. Together, these results indicate that infants’ ability to distinguish voices is affected by age as well as their language experience. We are now testing adults to determine if the effects of language experience on the ability to distinguish voices persists even after development.