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Exploring the association of infant receptive language and pitch variability in fathers’ infant-directed speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2019

Jean QUIGLEY ,
Elizabeth NIXON  and
Sarah LAWSON
Jean QUIGLEY*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Elizabeth NIXON
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Sarah LAWSON
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
*
*Corresponding author: School of Psychology, Áras an Phiarsaigh, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. E-mail: quigleyj@tcd.ie
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Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the links between prosodic features of paternal Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) and child characteristics. Pitch variability measures were extracted from the speech samples of 50 fathers during unstructured play with their two-year-old children. Evidence for a link between child receptive language ability (measured by the Bayley Scales of Infant Development III) and fathers’ pitch variability was obtained from Multiple Hierarchical Regression. Findings support the hypothesis that fathers tailor their speech to their children. This is one of the few studies to examine the relationship between fathers’ IDS and child language ability.

Keywords

fathers’ infant directed speechprosodychild language ability
Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 800 - 811
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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