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Mothers adapt their voice during children's adolescent development
Simon Leipold1, Daniel A Abrams2, Vinod Menon3,4,5
1Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 401 Quarry Rd., Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. leipold@stanford.edu.
Scientific Reports
|January 20, 2022
Summary
Mothers
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Speech Acoustics
- Child Development
Background:
- Mothers typically use higher-pitched, wider-pitch-range speech when addressing infants.
- Vocal pitch reduction occurs after early childhood, but changes through adolescence are unknown.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate vocal acoustic changes in mothers of older children (ages 7-16).
- Determine if child-directed speech features change with child's age.
- Assess the predictive power of acoustic features on child's age.
Main Methods:
- Analyzed vocal acoustics of 50 mothers with children aged 7-16.
- Examined pitch height, pitch range, and timbral features (brightness).
- Controlled for maternal age to isolate child-related effects.
Main Results:
- Mothers of older children had lower vocal pitch than mothers of younger children.
- Mother's voice pitch height predicted child's age, independent of maternal age.
- Voice brightness correlated inversely with child's age but didn't improve prediction.
Conclusions:
- Mothers' voices adapt to their child's developmental stage during adolescence.
- This vocal adaptation is independent of the mother's own aging process.
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