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Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures

View ORCID ProfileCourtney B. Hilton, Cody J. Moser, Mila Bertolo, Harry Lee-Rubin, Dorsa Amir, Constance M. Bainbridge, Jan Simson, Dean Knox, Luke Glowacki, Elias Alemu, Andrzej Galbarczyk, Grazyna Jasienska, Cody T. Ross, Mary Beth Neff, Alia Martin, Laura K. Cirelli, Sandra E. Trehub, Jinqi Song, Minju Kim, Adena Schachner, Tom A. Vardy, Quentin D. Atkinson, Amanda Salenius, Jannik Andelin, Jan Antfolk, Purnima Madhivanan, Anand Siddaiah, Caitlyn D. Placek, Gul Deniz Salali, Sarai Keestra, Manvir Singh, Scott A. Collins, John Q. Patton, Camila Scaff, Jonathan Stieglitz, Silvia Ccari Cutipa, Cristina Moya, Rohan R. Sagar, Mariamu Anyawire, Audax Mabulla, Brian M. Wood, Max M. Krasnow, View ORCID ProfileSamuel A. Mehr
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.09.032995
Courtney B. Hilton
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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  • ORCID record for Courtney B. Hilton
  • For correspondence: courtneyhilton@g.harvard.edu cmoser2@ucmerced.edu sam@wjh.harvard.edu
Cody J. Moser
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
2Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California Merced, Merced, CA 95343, USA
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  • For correspondence: courtneyhilton@g.harvard.edu cmoser2@ucmerced.edu sam@wjh.harvard.edu
Mila Bertolo
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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Harry Lee-Rubin
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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Dorsa Amir
3Boston College Department of Psychology, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA
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Constance M. Bainbridge
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
4Department of Communication, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
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Jan Simson
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
5Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, 1012 WX Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Dean Knox
6Operations, Information, and Decisions Department, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
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Luke Glowacki
7Department of Anthropology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
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Elias Alemu
8Jinka University, Jinka, South Omo Zone, Ethiopia
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Andrzej Galbarczyk
9Department of Environmental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Jagiellonian University Medical College, 31-066 Krakow, Poland
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Grazyna Jasienska
9Department of Environmental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Jagiellonian University Medical College, 31-066 Krakow, Poland
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Cody T. Ross
10Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
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Mary Beth Neff
11School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington 6012, New Zealand
12Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, Oslo 0315, Norway
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Alia Martin
11School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington 6012, New Zealand
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Laura K. Cirelli
13Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada
14Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada
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Sandra E. Trehub
14Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada
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Jinqi Song
15Department of Mathematics, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
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Minju Kim
16Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA
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Adena Schachner
16Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA
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Tom A. Vardy
17School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
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Quentin D. Atkinson
17School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
18Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
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Amanda Salenius
19Department of Psychology, Åbo Akademi, 20500 Turku, Finland
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Jannik Andelin
19Department of Psychology, Åbo Akademi, 20500 Turku, Finland
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Jan Antfolk
19Department of Psychology, Åbo Akademi, 20500 Turku, Finland
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Purnima Madhivanan
20Department of Health Promotion Sciences, College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA
21Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, College of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA
22Department of Family & Community Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA
23Public Health Research Institute of India, Mysuru 570020, India
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Anand Siddaiah
23Public Health Research Institute of India, Mysuru 570020, India
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Caitlyn D. Placek
24Department of Anthropology, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306, USA
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Gul Deniz Salali
25Department of Anthropology, University College London, WC1H 0BW London, UK
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Sarai Keestra
25Department of Anthropology, University College London, WC1H 0BW London, UK
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Manvir Singh
26Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
27Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, 31080 Toulouse Cedex 6, France
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Scott A. Collins
28School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
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John Q. Patton
29Division of Anthropology, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92831, USA
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Camila Scaff
30Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, 8006 Zürich, Switzerland
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Jonathan Stieglitz
27Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, 31080 Toulouse Cedex 6, France
31Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, 31080 Toulouse Cedex 6, France
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Silvia Ccari Cutipa
32Universidad Nacional del Altiplano Puno, Puno 21001, Peru
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Cristina Moya
33Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA
34Centre for Culture & Evolution, Brunel University London, UB8 3PH Uxbridge, UK
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Rohan R. Sagar
35Future Generations University, Circle Ville, WV 26807, USA
36Harpy Eagle Music Foundation, Georgetown, Guyana
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Mariamu Anyawire
37Mang’ola, Tanzania
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Audax Mabulla
38Department of Archaeology and Heritage, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
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Brian M. Wood
39Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
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Max M. Krasnow
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
40Division of Continuing Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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Samuel A. Mehr
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
41Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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  • ORCID record for Samuel A. Mehr
  • For correspondence: courtneyhilton@g.harvard.edu cmoser2@ucmerced.edu sam@wjh.harvard.edu
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Abstract

The forms of many species’ vocal signals are shaped by their functions1–15. In humans, a salient context of vocal signaling is infant care, as human infants are altricial16, 17. Humans often alter their vocalizations to produce “parentese”, speech and song produced for infants that differ acoustically from ordinary speech and song18–35 in fashions that have been proposed to support parent-infant communication and infant language learning36–39; modulate infant affect33, 40–45; and/or coordinate communicative interactions with infants46–48. These theories predict a form-function link in infant-directed vocalizations, with consistent acoustic differences between infant-directed and adult-directed vocalizations across cultures. Some evidence supports this prediction23, 27, 28, 32, 49–52, but the limited generalizability of individual ethnographic reports and laboratory experiments53 and small stimulus sets54, along with intriguing reports of counterexamples55–62, leave the question open. Here, we show that people alter the acoustic forms of their vocalizations in a consistent fashion across cultures when speaking or singing to infants. We collected 1,615 recordings of infant- and adult-directed singing and speech produced by 410 people living in 21 urban, rural, and small-scale societies, and analyzed their acoustic forms. We found cross-culturally robust regularities in the acoustics of infant-directed vocalizations, such that infant-directed speech and song were reliably classified from acoustic features found across the 21 societies studied. The acoustic profiles of infant-directedness differed across language and music, but in a consistent fashion worldwide. In a secondary analysis, we studied whether listeners are sensitive to these acoustic features, playing the recordings to 51,065 people recruited online, from many countries, who guessed whether each vocalization was infant-directed. Their intuitions were largely accurate, predictable in part by acoustic features of the recordings, and robust to the effects of linguistic relatedness between vocalizer and listener. By uniting rich cross-cultural data with computational methods, we show links between the production of vocalizations and cross-species principles of bioacoustics, informing hypotheses of the psychological functions and evolution of human communication.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • ↵∧ These authors contributed equally and are listed alphabetically.

  • Manuscript updated after another round of peer review.

  • https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5525161

  • https://github.com/themusiclab/infant-speech-song

  • https://themusiclab.org/quizzes/ids

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures
Courtney B. Hilton, Cody J. Moser, Mila Bertolo, Harry Lee-Rubin, Dorsa Amir, Constance M. Bainbridge, Jan Simson, Dean Knox, Luke Glowacki, Elias Alemu, Andrzej Galbarczyk, Grazyna Jasienska, Cody T. Ross, Mary Beth Neff, Alia Martin, Laura K. Cirelli, Sandra E. Trehub, Jinqi Song, Minju Kim, Adena Schachner, Tom A. Vardy, Quentin D. Atkinson, Amanda Salenius, Jannik Andelin, Jan Antfolk, Purnima Madhivanan, Anand Siddaiah, Caitlyn D. Placek, Gul Deniz Salali, Sarai Keestra, Manvir Singh, Scott A. Collins, John Q. Patton, Camila Scaff, Jonathan Stieglitz, Silvia Ccari Cutipa, Cristina Moya, Rohan R. Sagar, Mariamu Anyawire, Audax Mabulla, Brian M. Wood, Max M. Krasnow, Samuel A. Mehr
bioRxiv 2020.04.09.032995; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.09.032995
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Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures
Courtney B. Hilton, Cody J. Moser, Mila Bertolo, Harry Lee-Rubin, Dorsa Amir, Constance M. Bainbridge, Jan Simson, Dean Knox, Luke Glowacki, Elias Alemu, Andrzej Galbarczyk, Grazyna Jasienska, Cody T. Ross, Mary Beth Neff, Alia Martin, Laura K. Cirelli, Sandra E. Trehub, Jinqi Song, Minju Kim, Adena Schachner, Tom A. Vardy, Quentin D. Atkinson, Amanda Salenius, Jannik Andelin, Jan Antfolk, Purnima Madhivanan, Anand Siddaiah, Caitlyn D. Placek, Gul Deniz Salali, Sarai Keestra, Manvir Singh, Scott A. Collins, John Q. Patton, Camila Scaff, Jonathan Stieglitz, Silvia Ccari Cutipa, Cristina Moya, Rohan R. Sagar, Mariamu Anyawire, Audax Mabulla, Brian M. Wood, Max M. Krasnow, Samuel A. Mehr
bioRxiv 2020.04.09.032995; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.09.032995

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