scholarly journals Protophones, the precursors to speech, dominate the human infant vocal landscape

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1836) ◽  
pp. 20200255
Author(s):  
D. Kimbrough Oller ◽  
Gordon Ramsay ◽  
Edina Bene ◽  
Helen L. Long ◽  
Ulrike Griebel
Keyword(s):  
Random Sampling ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Vocal Learning ◽  
Human Infant ◽  
First Year ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Infant Vocalization ◽  
Species Comparisons ◽  
New Evidence

Human infant vocalization is viewed as a critical foundation for vocal learning and language. All apes share distress sounds (shrieks and cries) and laughter. Another vocal type, speech-like sounds, common in human infants, is rare but not absent in other apes. These three vocal types form a basis for especially informative cross-species comparisons. To make such comparisons possible we need empirical research documenting the frequency of occurrence of all three. The present work provides a comprehensive portrayal of these three vocal types in the human infant from longitudinal research in various circumstances of recording. Recently, the predominant vocalizations of the human infant have been shown to be speech-like sounds, or ‘protophones’, including both canonical and non-canonical babbling. The research shows that protophones outnumber cries by a factor of at least five based on data from random-sampling of all-day recordings across the first year. The present work expands on the prior reports, showing the protophones vastly outnumber both cry and laughter in both all-day and laboratory recordings in various circumstances. The data provide new evidence of the predominance of protophones in the infant vocal landscape and illuminate their role in human vocal learning and the origin of language. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.

scholarly journals Speech-like sounds dominate the human infant landscape

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Kimbrough Oller ◽  
Gordon Ramsay ◽  
Edina Bene ◽  
Helen L Long ◽  
Ulrike Griebel
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Vocal Learning ◽  
Human Infant ◽  
First Year ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Document Frequency ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Species Comparisons

Early human infant vocalization is viewed as forming not only a critical foundation for vocal learning of language, but also a crucial realm of communication affecting emotional and social development. Although speech-like sounds are rare or absent in other ape infants, they share distress sounds (shrieks and cries) and laughter with humans, forming a potential basis for especially informative cross-species comparisons as well as potential insights regarding usage and learning of vocal sounds. A fundamental need to make such comparisons possible is empirical research to document frequency of occurrence of vocalizations of various types in natural environments. The present work focuses on laughter in the human infant, a topic that has been viewed by many as a key factor in social development for humans and other apes. Yet we know of no research quantifying frequency of occurrence of human infant laughter in natural environments across the first year. In the past two decades it has been shown that the predominant vocalizations of the human infant are "protophones", the precursor sounds to speech. Longitudinal research has indicated unambiguously that protophones outnumber cries by a factor of at least five based on data from random-sampling of all-day recordings across the whole first year. The present work expands on the prior reports by reporting data showing that human infant laughter occurs even more rarely than cry in all-day recordings. Yet laughter is clearly a salient and important aspect of social development. We reason about the dominance of protophones in the infant vocal landscape in light of their role in illuminating human vocal learning and the origin of language.

scholarly journals High plasticity in marmoset monkey vocal development from infancy to adulthood

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (27) ◽  
pp. eabf2938
Author(s):  
Yasemin B. Gultekin ◽  
David G. C. Hildebrand ◽  
Kurt Hammerschmidt ◽  
Steffen R. Hage
Keyword(s):  
Nonhuman Primates ◽  
Vocal Learning ◽  
Vocal Behavior ◽  
First Year ◽  
High Plasticity ◽  
Vocal Development ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Development Stages ◽  
Marmoset Monkey ◽  
Physical Maturation

The vocal behavior of human infants undergoes marked changes across their first year while becoming increasingly speech-like. Conversely, vocal development in nonhuman primates has been assumed to be largely predetermined and completed within the first postnatal months. Contradicting this assumption, we found a dichotomy between the development of call features and vocal sequences in marmoset monkeys, suggestive of a role for experience. While changes in call features were related to physical maturation, sequences of and transitions between calls remained flexible until adulthood. As in humans, marmoset vocal behavior developed in stages correlated with motor and social development stages. These findings are evidence for a prolonged phase of plasticity during marmoset vocal development, a crucial primate evolutionary preadaptation for the emergence of vocal learning and speech.

Distribution ofStreptococcus mitisbiovar 1 phenotypes on shedding and non-shedding oral surfaces of human infants during the first year of life

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Kirchherr ◽  
George H. Bowden ◽  
Dorothy A. Richmond ◽  
Michael J. Sheridan ◽  
Katherine A. Wirth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
First Year ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
First Year Of Life

scholarly journals Socio-economic consequences of mental distress: quantifying the impact of self-reported mental distress on the days of incapacity to work and medical costs in a two-year period: a longitudinal study in Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Müller ◽  
Manuela Bombana ◽  
Monika Heinzel-Gutenbrenner ◽  
Nikolaus Kleindienst ◽  
Martin Bohus ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Mental Distress ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Depression Scale ◽  
Routine Data ◽  
Medical Costs ◽  
First Year ◽  
Second Year ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background Mental disorders are related to high individual suffering and significant socio-economic burdens. However, it remains unclear to what extent self-reported mental distress is related to individuals’ days of incapacity to work and their medical costs. This study aims to investigate the impact of self-reported mental distress for specific and non-specific days of incapacity to work and specific and non-specific medical costs over a two-year span. Method Within a longitudinal research design, 2287 study participants’ mental distress was assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). HADS scores were included as predictors in generalized linear models with a Tweedie distribution with log link function to predict participants’ days of incapacity to work and medical costs retrieved from their health insurance routine data during the following two-year period. Results Current mental distress was found to be significantly related to the number of specific days absent from work and medical costs. Compared to participants classified as no cases by the HADS (2.6 days), severe case participants showed 27.3-times as many specific days of incapacity to work in the first year (72 days) and 10.3-times as many days in the second year (44 days), and resulted in 11.4-times more medical costs in the first year (2272 EUR) and 6.2-times more in the second year (1319 EUR). The relationship of mental distress to non-specific days of incapacity to work and non-specific medical costs was also significant, but mainly driven from specific absent days and specific medical costs. Our results also indicate that the prevalence of presenteeism is considerably high: 42% of individuals continued to go to work despite severe mental distress. Conclusions Our results show that self-reported mental distress, assessed by the HADS, is highly related to the days of incapacity to work and medical costs in the two-year period. Reducing mental distress by improving preventive structures for at-risk populations and increasing access to evidence-based treatments for individuals with mental disorders might, therefore, pay for itself and could help to reduce public costs.

The critical role of experience in the early development of multisensory perception

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 200
Author(s):  
David J. Lewkowicz
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Early Experience ◽  
Multisensory Perception ◽  
First Year ◽  
Early Deprivation ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Perceptual Skills ◽  
First Year Of Life ◽  
Perceptual Narrowing

Human infancy is a time of rapid neural and behavioral development and multisensory perceptual skills emerge during this time. Both animal and human early deprivation studies have shown that experience contributes critically to the development of multisensory perception. Unfortunately, Bodison because the human deprivation studies have only studied adult responsiveness, little is known about the more immediate effects of early experience on multisensory development. Consequently, we have embarked on a program of research to investigate how early experience affects the development of multisensory perception in human infants. To do so, we have focused on multisensory perceptual narrowing, an experience-dependent process where initially broad perceptual tuning is narrowed to match the infant’s native environment. In this talk, I first review our work demonstrating that multisensory narrowing characterizes infants’ response to non-native (i.e., monkey) faces and voices, that the initially broad tuning is present at birth, that narrowing also occurs in the audiovisual speech domain, and that multisensory narrowing is an evolutionarily novel process. In the second part of the talk, I present findings from our most recent studies indicating that experience has a seemingly paradoxical effect on infant response to audio–visual synchrony, that experience narrows infant response to amodal language and intonational prosody cues, and that experience interacts with developmental changes in selective attention during the first year of life resulting in dramatic developmental shifts in human infants’ selective attention to the eyes and mouth of their interlocutors’ talking faces.

KONTRIBUSI PENGUASAAN KALIMAT EFEKTIF TERHADAP KETERAMPILAN MENULIS TEKS EKSPOSISI SISWA KELAS X SMK NEGERI 2 PADANG

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Diana Citra ◽  
Afnita Afnita
Keyword(s):  
Random Sampling ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
First Year ◽  
Performance Tests ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Correlational Design ◽  
Writing Skill ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Descriptive Method

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was categorized into three. First, to describe the effective sentence mastery of the first year students at SMK Negeri 2 Padang. Second, to describe the writing skills of a exposition of the first year students at SMK Negeri 2 Padang. Third, to describe the contribution of the effective sentence mastery into the writing skills of a exposition text made by the first year students at SMK Negeri 2 Padang. The design of this research was quantitative with a descriptive method. Then, this study also was a correlational design. The population of this study was the first year students at SMK Negeri 2 Padang for about 498 students. The sample of this study was taken by using a proportional random sampling technique (15%), which was 70 students. The data of this study were the results of effective sentence mastery and the results of the writing skill of a exposition text. The instrument of this study was an objective test to measure effective sentence mastery and performance tests to measure expositon text. There were several results of this study. First, the effective sentence mastery of the first year students at SMK Negeri 2 Padang was in Good qualifications (B). Second, the writing skills of a exposition of the first year students at SMK Negeri 2 Padang was in a Good qualification (B). Third, describe the effective sentence mastery contributed 82,00% to the exposition text writing skills of the first year students of SMK Negeri 2 Padang. Kata Kunci: kontribusi, penguasaan kalimat efektif,  keterampilan menulis teks eksposisi 

scholarly journals Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1781) ◽  
pp. 20132630 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mugdha Deshpande ◽  
Fakhriddin Pirlepesov ◽  
Thierry Lints
Keyword(s):  
Internal Model ◽  
Vocal Learning ◽  
Speech Development ◽  
Human Infant ◽  
Imitative Learning ◽  
Vocal Imitation ◽  
Motor Practice ◽  
Vocal Signals ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Major Impediment

As in human infant speech development, vocal imitation in songbirds involves sensory acquisition and memorization of adult-produced vocal signals, followed by a protracted phase of vocal motor practice. The internal model of adult tutor song in the juvenile male brain, termed ‘the template’, is central to the vocal imitation process. However, even the most fundamental aspects of the template, such as when, where and how it is encoded in the brain, remain poorly understood. A major impediment to progress is that current studies of songbird vocal learning use protracted tutoring over days, weeks or months, complicating dissection of the template encoding process. Here, we take the key step of tightly constraining the timing of template acquisition. We show that, in the zebra finch, template encoding can be time locked to, on average, a 2 h period of juvenile life and based on just 75 s of cumulative tutor song exposure. Crucially, we find that vocal changes occurring on the day of training correlate with eventual imitative success. This paradigm will lead to insights on how the template is instantiated in the songbird brain, with general implications for deciphering how internal models are formed to guide learning of complex social behaviours.

scholarly journals Stability of neuronal avalanches and long-range temporal correlations during the first year of life in human infants

2020 ◽  
Vol 225 (3) ◽  
pp. 1169-1183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mostafa Jannesari ◽  
Alireza Saeedi ◽  
Marzieh Zare ◽  
Silvia Ortiz-Mantilla ◽  
Dietmar Plenz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Long Range ◽  
First Year ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Temporal Correlations ◽  
First Year Of Life ◽  
Neuronal Avalanches

scholarly journals Sex hormone influence on human infants' sound characteristics: melody in spontaneous crying

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 20140095 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Wermke ◽  
Johannes Hain ◽  
Klaus Oehler ◽  
Peter Wermke ◽  
Volker Hesse
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Learning ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Healthy Infants ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Vocal System ◽  
Functional Lateralization ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hormone Influence ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Brain

The specific impact of sex hormones on brain development and acoustic communication is known from animal models. Sex steroid hormones secreted during early development play an essential role in hemispheric organization and the functional lateralization of the brain, e.g. language. In animals, these hormones are well-known regulators of vocal motor behaviour. Here, the association between melody properties of infants' sounds and serum concentrations of sex steroids was investigated. Spontaneous crying was sampled in 18 healthy infants, averaging two samples taken at four and eight weeks, respectively. Blood samples were taken within a day of the crying samples. The fundamental frequency contour (melody) was analysed quantitatively and the infants' frequency modulation skills expressed by a melody complexity index (MCI). These skills provide prosodic primitives for later language. A hierarchical, multiple regression approach revealed a significant, robust relationship between the individual MCIs and the unbound, bioactive fraction of oestradiol at four weeks as well as with the four-to-eight-week difference in androstenedione. No robust relationship was found between the MCI and testosterone. Our findings suggest that oestradiol may have effects on the development and function of the auditory–vocal system in human infants that are as powerful as those in vocal-learning animals.

Methodologic Issues in the Measurement of Oxytocin in Human Neonates

1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary White-Traut ◽  
Jean Powlesland ◽  
Deborah Gelhar ◽  
Robert Chatterton ◽  
Mariana Morris
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Behavior ◽  
Reliable Method ◽  
Human Infant ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Human Newborn ◽  
Tactile Contact ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
Baseline Levels ◽  
Human Neonates

Oxytocin’s (OT) role in the onset and maintenance of labor and in the letdown reflex is well known. OT also has been recognized as a neurotransmitter having functions in the central nervous system, including an influence on behavior (e.g., initiation of maternal behavior). This research was conducted to (1) evaluate whether human tactile contact in the human newborn would increase urine OT levels and alter infant behavioral state, and (2) determine the reliability of measuring OT in human infant urine. Although the data did not support the hypotheses, it was noted that OT levels, significantly decreased in infants who cried during the study period and that there was no correlation between infant’s chronologic age and OT levels. The findings illustrate several methodologic and measurement problems in the study of OT in human infants and that urine sampling in the neonate is not the most reliable method to evaluate change in OT levels. Some general issues concerning research with human infants also are discussed. Further research is recommended to document baseline levels of OT in neonates and to explore the use of salivary OT to measure short-term responses to interventions.

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