ERIC Number: EJ1265514
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Sep
Pages: 9
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0012-1649
EISSN: N/A
Let's Talk Action: Infant-Directed Speech Facilitates Infants' Action Learning
Schreiner, Melanie S.; van Schaik, Johanna E.; Sucevic, Jelena; Hunnius, Sabine; Meyer, Marlene
Developmental Psychology, v56 n9 p1623-1631 Sep 2020
Parents modulate their speech and their actions during infant-directed interactions, and these modulations facilitate infants' language and action learning, respectively. But do these behaviors and their benefits cross these modality boundaries? We investigated mothers' infant-directed speech and actions while they demonstrated the action-effects of 4 novel objects to their 14-month-old infants. Mothers (N = 35) spent the majority of the time either speaking or demonstrating the to-be-learned actions to their infant while hardly talking and acting at the same time. Moreover, mothers' infant-directed speech predicted infants' action learning success beyond the effect of infant-directed actions. Thus, mothers' speech modulations during naturalistic interactions do more than support infants' language learning; they also facilitate infants' action learning, presumably by directing and maintaining infants' attention toward the to-be learned actions.
Descriptors: Infants, Mothers, Parent Child Relationship, Active Learning, Language Acquisition, Speech Communication, Prediction, Attention Control, Novelty (Stimulus Dimension), Motor Reactions, Indo European Languages, Intonation, Suprasegmentals, Computer Software
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A

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