THE DEVELOPMENT OF INFANTS PREFERENCE FOR MOTHERESE

Generally, infants prefer infant-directed (ID) to adult-directed (AD) speech. Mostly, researchers have used unfamiliar female voices in thes e studies. We investigated preferences for maternal ID speech in 1- an d 4-month-olds. Using a procedure in which infants controlled access t o voices by fixating a visual display, infants listened to recordings of natural female ID and AD speech. In Experiment 1, 1-month-olds hear d recordings of maternal ID and AD speech, but these infants showed no preference for maternal ID speech. In Experiment 2, 1-month-olds hear d the same ID and AD speech tapes but were not familiar with the speak ers. Contrary to Experiment 1, these infants preferred ID speech. In E xperiment 3, 4-month-olds heard recordings of maternal ID and AD speec h and showed a significant preference for ID speech. Collectively, the se results suggest that infant attention to ID speech depends on both speaker-general and speaker-specific characteristics, with interesting developmental changes occurring during early infancy.