"Baby" Robot Learns Language Like The Real Thing

"You can see how people do enter into the spirit of the thing," Lyons says, "and they do tend to talk to DeeChee as if it was a small child."

The tests show that babies' preferences have nothing to do with the actual words mothers use. Babies choose motherese (or "parentese" or "caretakerese") even when the speaker is talking in a foreign language so infants can't understand the words, or when the words have been filtered out using computer techniques and only the pitch of the voice remains. Apparently they choose motherese not just because it's how their mother talks but because they like the way it sounds. Motherese is a sort of comfort language; it's like aural macaroni and cheese. Even grown-ups like it. Pat's graduate students discovered that listening to the lab tapes of motherese in a foreign language was a wonderful therapy for end-of-term stress. The mother's voice is an acoustic hook for the babies. It captures babies' attention and focuses it on the person who is talking to them.

The elaborate techniques of computer voice analysis reveal exactly what it is we do when we talk to an infant. The pitch of our voice rises dramatically, sometimes by more than an octave; our intonation becomes very melodic and singsongy; and our speech slows down and has exaggerated, lengthened vowels.

Motherese is a universal language. People across all cultures do it when they talk to their infants, even though they usually aren't aware of doing it at all. When mothers listen to recordings of themselves producing motherese, the reaction is: That can't be me. I sound really stupid. Should I be doing that? But they do it intuitively, without conscious awareness.

Why do we do it? Do we produce motherese simply to get the babies' attention? (It certainly does that.) Do we do it just to convey affection and comfort? Or does motherese have a more focused purpose? It turns out that motherese is more than just a sweet siren song we use to draw our babies to us. Motherese seems to actually help babies solve the Language problem.

Motherese sentences are shorter and simpler than sentences directed at adults. Moreover, grown-ups speaking to babies often repeat the same thing over and over with slight variations. ("You are a pretty girl, aren't you? Aren't you a pretty girl? Pretty, pretty girl.") These characteristics of motherese may help children to figure out the words and grammar of their language.

But the clearest evidence that motherese helps babies learn comes from studies of the sounds of motherese. Recent studies show that the well-formed, elongated consonants and vowels of motherese are particularly clear examples of speech sounds. Mothers and other caregivers are teachers as well as lovers. Completely unconsciously they produce sounds more clearly and pronounce them more accurately when they talk to babies than when they talk to other adults. When mothers say the word bead to an adult, it's produced in a fraction of a second and it's a bit sloppy. But when mothers say that same word to their infants, it becomes beeeeeed, a well-produced, clearly articulated word. This makes it easier for infants to map the sounds we use in language.

Why would one speak differently to a small child than a adult? I've kept infants quiet and completely enthralled for long periods of time by speaking to them in the same way i would to an adult. They know they're being spoken to seriously, they can tell the difference between that and the goo-goo ga-ga baby talk ****. If one objects that a small child hasn't the vocabulary to understand, i ask how they are supposed to acquire it.

Shore and other researchers believe that baby talk contributes to mental development, as it helps teach the child the basic function and structure of language. Studies have found that responding to an infant's babble with meaningless babble aids the infant's development; while the babble has no logical meaning, the verbal interaction demonstrates to the child the bidirectional nature of speech, and the importance of verbal feedback. Some experts advise that parents should not talk to infants and young children solely in baby talk, but should integrate some normal adult speech as well. The high-pitched sound of motherese gives it special acoustic qualities which may appeal to the infant. Motherese may aid a child in the acquisition and/or comprehension of language-particular rules which are otherwise unpredictable; an example is the reduction or avoidance of pronoun reversal errors. It has been also suggested that motherese is crucial for children to acquire the ability to ask questions. Some[who?] feel that parents should refer to the child and others by their names only (no pronouns, e.g., he, I, or you), to avoid confusing infants who have yet to form an identity independent from their parents.

You have offered absolutely no evidence that this would help "robot babies" learn language.

Baby talk is more effective than regular speech in getting an infant's attention. Studies have shown that infants actually prefer to listen to this type of speech.[8] Some researchers, including Rima Shore,[9] believe that baby talk is an important part of the emotional bonding process between the parents and their child that help the infants learn the language. Other researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Wisconsin confirm that using basic “baby talk” helps babies pick up words faster than usual.[10] Infants actually pay more attention when parents use infant-directed language, which has a slower and more repetitive tone than used in regular conversation. This child-directed speech has also been shown in languages other than English.[11]

Because I see the "goo-goo ga-ga baby talk ****" sort of comments a lot, and one thing I found surprising as a mom was how I went to that fairly automatically, and one thing I found interesting in that book was the explanation of why we do that and why it's a good thing.