The effect of infant-directed speech on early multimodal communicative production in Spanish and Basque.
We analyzed the effect of infant-directed speech (IDS) on multimodal communicative production of children at the beginning of the second year of life in two different languages: Spanish and Basque. Twelve Spanish and twelve Basque children aged between 12 and 15 months observed two versions of an audiovisual story: one version was narrated with IDS and the other with adult-directed speech (ADS). We analyzed the use of gaze and the communicative behaviors produced by children. The time spent looking at the story increases in the IDS condition regardless of the language of the narration. Children produced more multimodal communicative behaviors while watching the IDS version both in Spanish and in Basque. These results suggest that IDS increases attention and social engagement promoting joint attention episodes.
['DE Pablo|Irati|I|', 'Murillo|Eva|E|', 'Romero|Asier|A|']
D000328:Adult D001288:Attention D003142:Communication D005260:Female D005868:Gestures D006801:Humans D007223:Infant D007802:Language D007804:Language Development D008297:Male D033262:Narration D013030:Spain D013060:Speech D013067:Speech Perception
infant-directed speech multimodal communication gestures language development vocalizations