English-Speaking Adults' Labeling of Child- and Adult-Directed Speech Across Languages and Its Relationship to Perception of Affect.

ABSTRACT: Child-directed speech, as a specialized form of speech directed toward young children, has been found across numerous languages around the world and has been suggested as a universal feature of human experience. However, variation in its implementation and the extent to which it is culturally supported has called its universality into question. Child-directed speech has also been posited to be associated with expression of positive affect or "happy talk." Here, we examined Canadian English-speaking adults' ability to discriminate child-directed from adult-directed speech samples from two dissimilar language/cultural communities; an urban Farsi-speaking population, and a rural, horticulturalist Tseltal Mayan speaking community. We also examined the relationship between participants' address

SUBMITTER: Soderstrom M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8440885 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature