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Researchers Create Computer Program To Analyze Speech
POSTED: 6:31 p.m. EST February 5, 2003
Women really are better at baby talk than men, according to a new study.
Researchers found that when parents speak in baby talk with their infants, mothers' utterances are less ambiguous than fathers'. And though it is practically impossible to know what babies make of it all, this suggests that infants may find their mothers easier to understand.
The study is published in Wednesday's issue of New Scientist.
Gerald McRoberts, a psychologist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., said that we already know that babies pick up on the emotional content of speech rather than the actual words. But it is still unclear precisely how adults use various acoustic properties in their voice, such as rhythm, pitch and stress, to communicate different meanings to infants.
McRoberts and Malcolm Slaney of IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., designed a computer program to evaluate the properties of the speech that parents use as they talk to their children. They then asked six sets of parents to play with their infants and make approving or disapproving comments designed either to encourage the child, or to warn them to stay away from dangerous objects such as sharp instruments or electrical appliances.
When the program analysed the acoustic properties of nearly 700 excerpts of speech, it correctly distinguished between approving or disapproving comments 80 percent of the time. But the program correctly identified 12 percent more of the comments made by the mothers, suggesting that women use less ambiguous sounds than men to convey to babies what they mean.
McRoberts admits it is possible that men communicate as effectively as women, but do so using speech characteristics that the computer program didn't pick up. Or they may have been less relaxed in the lab.
The only way to be sure whether babies can tell the difference between their parents' communication would be to "ask" them -- for instance, by seeing how they respond to voices as their acoustic parameters are systematically changed.
But would be difficult for many reasons, McRoberts said: "Not the least of which is that you can make a baby smile or laugh lots of times in an experiment, but you can only make them cry once -- then it's all over."
Additional Resource:
Researchers found that when parents speak in baby talk with their infants, mothers' utterances are less ambiguous than fathers'. And though it is practically impossible to know what babies make of it all, this suggests that infants may find their mothers easier to understand.
The study is published in Wednesday's issue of New Scientist.
Gerald McRoberts, a psychologist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., said that we already know that babies pick up on the emotional content of speech rather than the actual words. But it is still unclear precisely how adults use various acoustic properties in their voice, such as rhythm, pitch and stress, to communicate different meanings to infants.
McRoberts and Malcolm Slaney of IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., designed a computer program to evaluate the properties of the speech that parents use as they talk to their children. They then asked six sets of parents to play with their infants and make approving or disapproving comments designed either to encourage the child, or to warn them to stay away from dangerous objects such as sharp instruments or electrical appliances.
When the program analysed the acoustic properties of nearly 700 excerpts of speech, it correctly distinguished between approving or disapproving comments 80 percent of the time. But the program correctly identified 12 percent more of the comments made by the mothers, suggesting that women use less ambiguous sounds than men to convey to babies what they mean.
McRoberts admits it is possible that men communicate as effectively as women, but do so using speech characteristics that the computer program didn't pick up. Or they may have been less relaxed in the lab.
The only way to be sure whether babies can tell the difference between their parents' communication would be to "ask" them -- for instance, by seeing how they respond to voices as their acoustic parameters are systematically changed.
But would be difficult for many reasons, McRoberts said: "Not the least of which is that you can make a baby smile or laugh lots of times in an experiment, but you can only make them cry once -- then it's all over."
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