Temporal Coordination in Mother-Infant Vocal Interaction: A Cross-Cultural Comparison.

ABSTRACT: Temporal coordination of vocal exchanges between mothers and their infants emerges from a developmental process that relies on the ability of communication partners to co-coordinate and predict each other's turns. Consequently, the partners engage in communicative niche construction that forms a foundation for language in human infancy. While robust universals in vocal turn-taking have been found, differences in the timing of maternal and infant vocalizations have also been reported across cultures. In this study, we examine the temporal structure of vocal interactions in 38 mother-infant dyads in the first two years across two cultures-American and Lebanese-by studying observed and randomized distributions of vocalizations, focusing on both gaps and overlaps in naturalistic 10-min vocal i

SUBMITTER: Farran LK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6856762 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature