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Published on: May 3, 2017
Manual actions affect vocalizations of infants
Paolo Bernardis1, Arianna Bello, Paola Pettenati
1Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43100 Parma, Italy.
Experimental Brain Research
|January 10, 2008
Summary
Infant vocalizations change based on object size, suggesting early links between manual actions and communication. This research explores how object properties influence infant speech development and object identification.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Speech production is influenced by upper limb gestures and object interactions.
- Broca's area integrates motor representations for arm and mouth, supporting the gesture-to-speech evolution hypothesis.
- This integration may play a role in infant language development.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the integration of gestures and transitive actions with speech in infant language development.
- To determine if object properties influence infant vocalizations during manipulation and gesturing.
Main Methods:
- Recorded vocalizations of 11-13 month old infants.
- Observed infants during object manipulation and arm gestures towards objects of varying sizes.
- Analyzed vocalization frequency spectra in relation to object size and action type.
Main Results:
- Infant voice spectra frequency increased when interacting with large objects compared to small objects.
- Both object manipulation and gesturing towards large objects elicited higher vocalization frequencies.
- These findings indicate object properties influence vocal communication in infants.
Conclusions:
- Object properties that evoke manual interaction commands are used for object identification and communication in infants.
- This study provides evidence for the early development of the gesture-action-speech integration system.
- The findings support the hypothesis of language evolving from manual gestures.
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