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Imaging study sheds light on neural origins of baby talk

Date:
August 10, 2010
Source:
RIKEN
Summary:
Neural processing in the brains of parents talking to their babies may reveal secrets about early stages of language acquisition in infants, according to new research that shows for the first time that experience, gender and personality affect how parents process the speech they use when addressing infants.
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Neural processing in the brains of parents talking to their babies may reveal secrets about early stages of language acquisition in infants, according to findings by researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute and their collaborators, who show for the first time that experience, gender and personality affect how parents process the speech they use when addressing infants.

Their research appears in the journal NeuroImage.

Infant-directed speech (IDS), also known as "baby talk," is a style of speech used by adults to address infants, characterized by high-pitched, articulated intonation and a simplified lexicon. While ubiquitous across languages and cultures, the neural mechanisms underlying IDS are unknown.

To elucidate these mechanisms, the researchers applied functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to the brains of 35 first-time parents with preverbal infants and 30 men and women without any parenting experience. Subjects also included 16 mothers with toddlers who spoke two-word utterances and 18 mothers with children in elementary school.

While initially aiming to measure brain activity during active speech, signal disruption caused by head movement prompted the researchers to focus on listening instead, which mirrors similar activation patterns without requiring any motion. Brain scans conducted on subjects listening to recorded IDS revealed that mothers with preverbal infants exhibited increased brain activity in areas of the brain known to govern language. This enhanced activation was not observed in any other group, including mothers of children who had advanced beyond the preverbal stage.

Another brain region signaled a second IDS connection: increased cortical activation was observed in speech-related motor areas of mothers in the same group who scored high on a personality test for extroversion. The results thus expose clear distinctions in how people process and generate IDS, providing the first evidence at the neural level that "baby talk," by acting as a bridge for linguistic transfer from mother to infant, plays a key role in the early stages of language acquisition.


Story Source:

Materials provided by RIKEN. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Yoshi-Taka Matsuda, Kenichi Ueno, R. Allen Waggoner, Donna Erickson, Yoko Shimura, Keiji Tanaka, Kang Cheng, Reiko Mazuka. Processing of infant-directed speech by adults. NeuroImage, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.07.072

Cite This Page:

RIKEN. "Imaging study sheds light on neural origins of baby talk." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 10 August 2010. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810082646.htm>.
RIKEN. (2010, August 10). Imaging study sheds light on neural origins of baby talk. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 7, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810082646.htm
RIKEN. "Imaging study sheds light on neural origins of baby talk." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810082646.htm (accessed October 7, 2024).

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