Maternal Accommodation in Infant-Directed Speech during Mother's and Twin-Infants' Vocal Interactions

2003 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 481-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katsuko Niwano ◽  
Kuniaki Sugai

In this study a mother's instinctive accommodations of vocal fundamental frequency (f0) of infant-directed speech to two different infants was explored. Maternal speech directed to individual 3-mo.-old fraternal twin-infants was subjected to acoustic analysis. Natural samples of infant-directed speech were recorded at home. There were differences in the rate of infants' vocal responses. The mother changed her f0 and patterns of intonation contour when she spoke to each infant. When she spoke to the infant whose vocal response was less frequent than the other infant, she used a higher mean f0 and a rising intonation contour more than when she spoke to the other infant. The result suggested that the mother's speech characteristic is not inflexible and that the mother may use a higher f0 and rising contour as a strategy to elicit an infant's less frequent vocal response.

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 563-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Samuelsson ◽  
Lars C. Hydén

Nonverbal vocalizations in dementia are important clinically since they generally have been regarded as disruptive behavior that is disturbing. The aim of the present study is to describe the interactional pattern, including the prosodic package, of nonverbal vocalizations in a participant in a late stage of dementia. The acoustic analysis shows that the vocalizations do not differ significantly from the verbal utterances regarding mean fundamental frequency or pitch range. The mean fundamental frequency, F0, of the utterances from Anna was significantly higher than the mean F0 from the other elderly participants. The analysis demonstrates that there is a singing-like type of vocalizations that does not resemble the previously described patterns of nonverbal vocalizations. This pattern of the nonverbal vocalization does not resemble the intonation of Anna’s verbal utterances. The other participants perceive Anna’s vocalizations as potentially meaningful turns. Nonverbal vocalizations in clinical settings should be taken as communicative contributions.


2002 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katsuko Niwano ◽  
Kuniaki Sugai

Generally, infants prefer infant-directed speech to adult-directed speech. This study investigated which acoustic features of maternal infant-directed speech elicit effectively 3-mo.-old infants' vocal response. The participants were 40 Japanese mother and infant dyads. Vocal f0 from the mother's speech and the infant's vocalization was extracted using Computerized Speech Laboratory (CSL4300) and custom software. The acoustical features measured were mean fundamental frequency (f0), and f0 contour. The rate of the infant's vocal response was significantly higher when the maternal infant-directed speech was terminated with a falling contour rather than a rising or flat contour. There was no significant difference between the mean f0 of the maternal infant-directed speech followed or not followed by the infant's vocal response. This suggests that the falling contour of terminal maternal infant-directed speech serves to elicit the 3-mo.-old infant's vocal response.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Laith Mzahim Khudair Kazem

The armed violence of many radical Islamic movements is one of the most important means to achieve the goals and objectives of these movements. These movements have legitimized and legitimized these violent practices and constructed justification ideologies in order to justify their use for them both at home against governments or against the other Religiously, intellectually and even culturally, or abroad against countries that call them the term "unbelievers", especially the United States of America.


1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. H. Whalen ◽  
Andrea G. Levitt ◽  
Qi Wang

ABSTRACTThe two- and three-syllable reduplicative babbling of five French-learning and five English-learning infants (0;5 to 1; 1) was examined in two ways for intonational differences. The first measure was a categorization into one of five categories (RISING, FALLING, RISE-FALL, FALL-RISE, LEVEL) by expert listeners. The second was the fundamental frequency (F0) from the early, middle and late portion of each syllable. Both measures showed significant differences between the two language groups. 65% of the utterances from both groups were classified as either rising of falling. For the French children, these were divided equally into the rising and the falling categories, while 75% of those utterances for the English children were judged to have falling intonation. Proportions of the other three categories were not significantly different by language environment. In both languages, though, three-syllable utterances were more likely to have a complex contour than two-syllable ones. Analysis of the F0patterns confirmed the perceptual assessment. Several aspects of the target languages help explain these intonational differences in prelinguistic babbling.


1974 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Virkkunen

The purpose of this study was to clarify whether alcoholic incest offenders differ from other criminals who commit these offences. The series consisted of 45 cases of incest, of which 22 cases (48.9 per cent) gave an indication of alcoholism in the offender. The alcoholics showed more evidence of previous criminal offences, and this was especially true when considering acts of violence only. The alcoholics had also exhibited more often than the others aggressive features at home before the detection of incest. Statistically, significant differences were not arrived at as to depression, psychotic disturbances, intellectual defects, problems of jealousy, psychiatric hospitalization, and earlier sexual behaviour. The spouse had a rejective sexual attitude towards the offender in alcoholic cases more frequently than in other cases. The cause of this appeared to be mainly disgust at the abuse of alcoholic drinks and its consequences, as well as the result of a large family and/or poor living conditions. In more than half of the cases of incest in both groups actual intercourse had taken place. Generally, the relationship had, however, started by only touching sexual organs and so forth. According to the offender the victim had shown activity in one-third of the cases of alcoholics. The alcoholic offender tended to be under the influence of alcohol at least at the beginning of the relationship more often than the non-alcoholic person. Offences or an offence were reported by the victim or the offender's spouse in the cases of alcoholics more often than in the other cases; then the informer was usually an outsider. However, the victim's and the spouse's fear of the offender was one reason for concealment when the alcoholics were involved.


2009 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 117-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Evans

ABSTRACTIn the vibrant current debate about European empires and their ideologies, one basic dichotomy still tends to be overlooked: that between, on the one hand, the plurality of modern empires of colonisation, commerce and settlement; and, on the other, the traditional claim to single and undividedimperiumso long embodied in the Roman Empire and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire, or (First) Reich. This paper examines the tensions between the two, as manifested in the theory and practice of Habsburg imperial rule. The Habsburgs, emperors of the Reich almost continuously through its last centuries, sought to build their own power-base within and beyond it. The first half of the paper examines how by the eighteenth century their ‘Monarchy’, subsisting alongside the Reich, dealt with the associated legacy of empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs could pursue a free-standing Austrian ‘imperialism’, but it rested on an uneasy combination of old and new elements and was correspondingly vulnerable to challenge from abroad and censure at home. The second half of the article charts this aspect of Habsburg government through an age of international imperialism and its contribution to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-513
Author(s):  
Barry Zuckerman ◽  
Marilyn Augustyn ◽  
Betsy McAlister Groves ◽  
Steven Parker

In a commentary published previously, we communicated our concern regarding the plight of children who witness violence.1 Research suggests that children who witness violence suffer significant psychologic and behavioral problems that interfere with their ability to function in school, at home, and with peers. The primary focus of that commentary was children who witnessed community violence. Our ongoing clinical experience, heightened by media attention on domestic violence, including the O.J. Simpson case, leads us to revisit silent victims with a sole focus on those children who witness domestic violence. Domestic violence is a particularly devastating event for a child who, in the presence of danger, typically turns to a parent for protection and for whom there is no comfort or security if one parent is the perpetrator of violence, and the other is a terrified victim.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-45
Author(s):  
Donna Erickson ◽  
Albert Rilliard ◽  
João Antônio de Moraes ◽  
Takaaki Shochi

Attitudes have been described for different languages, with varying labels or contexts of occurrence for same labels. It renders cross-cultural comparison uncertain. A corpus was designed to bypass these limitations. This paper focuses on USA English produced by L1 and L2 speakers. The best performances in 9 attitudes are used in a forced-choice test, in both audio and visual modalities. Results show that 6 categories group the presented attitudes in coherent sets. The cultural origin affects marginally the categorisation of the expressions. An acoustic analysis of the fundamental frequency and intensity allows to test the predictions of two theoretical propositions – the Frequency code and the Effort code. It concludes to a main coherence of cross-language expressivity, and discusses differences. For negative expressions of imposition, L1 speakers follow the Frequency code – and L1 listeners expect this; L2 speakers use the Effort code in the same situations, leading to confusions in the audio-only modality. Differences for seduction and irony are also discussed.


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