Speech vs. singing: infants choose happier sounds.

Marieve Corbeil,Sandra E Trehub,Isabelle Peretz

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00372

Abstract

Infants prefer speech to non-vocal sounds and to non-human vocalizations, and they prefer happy-sounding speech to neutral speech. They also exhibit an interest in singing, but there is little knowledge of their relative interest in speech and singing. The present study explored infants' attention to unfamiliar audio samples of speech and singing. In Experiment 1, infants 4–13 months of age were exposed to happy-sounding infant-directed speech vs. hummed lullabies by the same woman. They listened significantly longer to the speech, which had considerably greater acoustic variability and expressiveness, than to the lullabies. In Experiment 2, infants of comparable age who heard the lyrics of a Turkish children's song spoken vs. sung in a joyful/happy manner did not exhibit differential listening. Infants in Experiment 3 heard the happily sung lyrics of the Turkish children's song vs. a version that was spoken in an adult-directed or affectively neutral manner. They listened significantly longer to the sung version. Overall, happy voice quality rather than vocal mode (speech or singing) was the principal contributor to infant attention, regardless of age.

Highlights

There is considerable debate about similarities and differences in the processing of language and music (e.g., Pinker, 1997; Patel, 2008; Jackendoff, 2009; Peretz, 2009)
Because the greatest differences arise from the presence of propositional meaning in language but not in music, comparisons in the early pre-verbal period are of particular interest (Trehub et al, 1993; ChenHafteck, 1997; McMullen and Saffran, 2004; Brandt et al, 2012), notably when both modes of parental communication are used to regulate infant attention and affect (Fernald, 1992; Papoušek, 1994; Kitamura and Burnham, 2003; Trehub et al, 2010)
Our findings are consistent with the speech bias that has been proposed for young infants (Vouloumanos and Werker, 2004, 2007), there are a number of alternative interpretations

Summary

Introduction

There is considerable debate about similarities and differences in the processing of language and music (e.g., Pinker, 1997; Patel, 2008; Jackendoff, 2009; Peretz, 2009). ID speech features higher pitch, expanded pitch contours, slower speaking rate, longer vowels, larger dynamic range, and greater rhythmicity and repetition than AD speech (Stern et al, 1982, 1983; Fernald and Simon, 1984; Fernald et al, 1989). These features, especially high pitch, expanded pitch contours, rhythmicity, repetition, and reduced speaking rate, make ID speech sound much more musical than AD speech (Fernald, 1989, 1992). With its higher pitch and greater pitch range, receives higher ratings of positive affect by adult listeners (Kitamura and Lam, 2009)

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