Abstract
The aim of this study was to explore the role of voices as cues to adults of children’s needs for potential caregiving during early childhood. To this purpose, 74 college students listened to pairs of 5-year-old versus 10-year-old children verbalizing neutral-content sentences and indicated which voice was better associated with each of 14 traits, potentially meaningful in interactions between young children and adults. Results indicated that children with immature voices were perceived more positively and as being more helpless than children with mature voices. Children’s voices, regardless of the content of speech, seem to be a powerful source of information about children’s need for caregiving for parents and others during the first six years of life.
Highlights
Caregiving in humans is a universal characteristic with a long evolutionary history (Lang & Fowers, 2019)
We do know that facial cues do not seem to be as important for promoting caregiving during early childhood as they are during infancy
We presented samples of voices of both preschool and school-age children to groups of college students and asked their impressions about the degree of positive affect, negative affect, intelligence, and helplessness evoked by the voices
Summary
Caregiving in humans is a universal characteristic with a long evolutionary history (Lang & Fowers, 2019). The remarkable improvement in language skills following infancy increases the relevance of children’s speech as cues for the need for care In this vein, children who verbalize certain types of immature explanations of ordinary phenomena (what has been called “supernatural thinking”: e.g., “The sun’s not out today because it’s mad,” “The big peak is for long walks, and the small peak is for short walks”) are perceived more positively and helpless by both adults and older adolescents (14 to 17 years old) than children verbalizing more mature, adultlike explanations of the same phenomena (e.g., “The sun’s not out today because the clouds are blocking it”) (Bjorklund et al, 2010; Periss et al, 2012). Little is known yet, to our knowledge, about the potential role of the voice (vocal cues) as a cue for the need for careging during early childhood, and this is the main purpose of the present study
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