1991 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Development of Prosodic Aspects of Speech in Early Infancy
| Project/Area Number |
02808005
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Informatics
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| Research Institution | Saitama University |
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Principal Investigator |
SHIMURA Yoko Saitama University, Department of Education, Associate Professor, 教育学部, 助教授 (60134326)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
SHYUTO Toshimoto Saitama University, Department of Education, Associate Professor, 教育学部, 講師 (30187504)
IMAIZUMI Satoshi Tokyo University, Faculty of Medicine, Associate Professor Research Institute of, 医学部・音声言語医学研究施設, 助教授 (80122018)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1990 – 1991
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| Keywords | Infant / Vocalization / Prosody / Speech Acquisition / Language Development / Acoustic Analysis / Perceptual Analysis / Interaction |
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| Research Abstract |
Developmental changes in infants' vocal expressions of emotion were investigated via acoustical and perceptual experiments. Analyzing voice samples recorded at mother/infant or unfamiliar-adult/infant vocal interactions, the following hypotheses were obtained. 1)Very young infants, even of 6 to 9 month of age, can produce various qualities of voice with wide ranges of fundamental frequency and intensity. 2)Infants tend to emerge prosodic patterns which are influenced by their ambient language at about 8 to 10 month of age. Even before those months of age, however, they produce various voice qualities which carvmay be perceived by adult listeners as emotional expressions. 3)Infants' vocalization may change due to by whom and how they are interacted. Details of emotional aspects of infants' vocalizations recorded at mother/infant interactions were analyzed through perceptual experiments. Crying was not included. Results showed that ratings for most vocalizations recorded at 6/9 months of age were high mainly for the terms expressing positive emotions such as "amaeru" and "pleasure". On the other hand, ratings for those recorded at 11/17 months of age were high not only for positive emotional terms like "happy" and "pleasure", but also for negative emotional terms such as "refusal" and "anger. " These results indicate that infants' vocalizations at very early of age or the babbling stage contain wide variety of acoustic characteristics which may convey various emotional expressions, but those conveying negative emotional aspects without crying might still be developing at least during 9/11 months of age. Relationships between emotional aspects and linguistic organization of infants' vocalization are now being investigated.
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