ArticleDevelopmental science2021
The moment-to-moment pitch dynamics of child-directed speech shape toddlers' attention and learning.
Article in Developmental science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- How Kindergarten Teachers Adapt Their Speech for Children: Acoustic Evidence and Educational Implications from Mandarin Child-Directed Speech.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Caregiver Oral Reading Prosody Is Associated With Preschoolers' Storybook Listening Comprehension.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2025Article
- Prosodic Cues Support Inferences About the Question's Pedagogical Intent.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- Endogenous Control and Reward-based Mechanisms Shape Infants' Attention Biases to Caregiver Faces.Developmental psychobiology · 2024Article
- Recognition of Speech With Dynamic Pitch Manipulation in Noise: Effects of Manipulation Methods.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2024Article
- Word Repetition and Isolation are Intertwined in Children's Early Language Experiences.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2024Article
- Evidence for Infant-directed Speech Preference Is Consistent Across Large-scale, Multi-site Replication and Meta-analysis.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2024Article
- Interpersonal eye-tracking reveals the dynamics of interacting minds.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Review
- Sensitivity to the sonority sequencing principle in rats (Rattus norvegicus).Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Synchrony to a beat predicts synchrony with other minds.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Infants' object interactions are long and complex during everyday joint engagement.Developmental science · 2022Article
- Dialogic Book-Sharing as a Privileged Intersubjective Space.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Fine-tuning language discrimination: Bilingual and monolingual infants' detection of language switching.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies · 2021Article
- Neural synchrony predicts children's learning of novel words.Cognition · 2021Article
- Listeners' perceptions of the certainty and honesty of a speaker are associated with a common prosodic signature.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Webcams, Songs, and Vocabulary Learning: A Comparison of In-Person and Remote Data Collection as a Way of Moving Forward With Child-Language Research.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Adults and children predict in complex and variable referential contexts.Language, cognition and neuroscience · 2021Article
- How you read the text matters: Caregiver oral reading prosody during shared reading relates to preschoolers' language skills.Early childhood research quarterlyArticle
- Parentese Elicits Infant Speech-Like Vocalizations in Typically Developing and Autistic Infants.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant StudiesArticle
- Toddlers' prior social experience with speakers influences their word learning.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant StudiesArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Young children have an overall preference for child-directed speech (CDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS), and its structural features are thought to facilitate language learning. Many studies have supported these findings, but less is known about processing of CDS at short, sub-second timescales. How do the moment-to-moment dynamics of CDS influence young children's attention and learning? In Study 1, we used hierarchical clustering to characterize patterns of pitch variability in a natural CDS corpus, which uncovered four main word-level contour shapes: 'fall', 'rise', 'hill', and 'valley'. In Study 2, we adapted a measure from adult attention research-pupil size synchrony-to quantify real-time attention to speech across participants, and found that toddlers showed higher synchrony to the dynamics of CDS than to ADS. Importantly, there were consistent differences in toddlers' attention when listening to the four word-level contour types. In Study 3, we found that pupil size synchrony during exposure to novel words predicted toddlers' learning at test. This suggests that the dynamics of pitch in CDS not only shape toddlers' attention but guide their learning of new words. By revealing a physiological response to the real-time dynamics of CDS, this investigation yields a new sub-second framework for understanding young children's engagement with one of the most important signals in their environment.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.