Toddlers' sensitivity to talker age in novel word learning: Children are better teachers

Abstract

From early on, young children are sensitive to talker-specific attributes present in the speech signal. For example, infants attend selectively and learn better from their mother’s voice than another female voice. Since age influences vocal quality, we asked whether toddlers show similar selective attention and learning from talkers of specific ages. We recorded visual and auditory stimuli from 3 adult males and females and 3 boys and girls. In Experiment 1, 24 toddlers viewed two side-by-side video clips of two talkers reciting a nursery rhyme and heard a soundtrack that matched with either the age or gender of one of the two talkers. The results revealed that children were able to match both vocal age and gender attributes to visual attributes. In Experiment 2, 24 toddlers were tested in a novel word learning task with talkers of different ages and genders. The results revealed that toddlers learned novel words from child talkers but failed to learn from adult talkers. These results suggest that young learners are sensitive to talker age information in speech and are biased towards learning words from younger talkers. We discuss the origins of such a bias.From early on, young children are sensitive to talker-specific attributes present in the speech signal. For example, infants attend selectively and learn better from their mother’s voice than another female voice. Since age influences vocal quality, we asked whether toddlers show similar selective attention and learning from talkers of specific ages. We recorded visual and auditory stimuli from 3 adult males and females and 3 boys and girls. In Experiment 1, 24 toddlers viewed two side-by-side video clips of two talkers reciting a nursery rhyme and heard a soundtrack that matched with either the age or gender of one of the two talkers. The results revealed that children were able to match both vocal age and gender attributes to visual attributes. In Experiment 2, 24 toddlers were tested in a novel word learning task with talkers of different ages and genders. The results revealed that toddlers learned novel words from child talkers but failed to learn from adult talkers. These results suggest that young l...