Exploring priming effects of social and non-social attention getters on older infants' preferences for infant-directed speech

Infant Behavior & Development
Tyler C McFaydenCaroline Taylor

Abstract

In infant research, various auditory/visual events are often used as attention getters to orient infants to a screen and alert them to upcoming information for their detection, discrimination, and/or recognition. Importantly, the influence of attention-getters on infants' performance has rarely been systematically evaluated, even though these attention cues could be affecting subsequent information processing. This study investigated whether specific attention-getters could prime infants' preferences for infant-directed speech (IDS) compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). Both a non-social and a social prime were chosen with the prediction that the social prime would strengthen infants' attention to IDS on a subsequent trial, but the non-social prime would have no differential effect on subsequent attention to either speech type. A total of 20 12- to 18-month old infants were presented with either a nonsocial (rotating form + chimes) or social (smiling female + voice) prime in an infant-controlled, speech preference procedure with both IDS and ADS speech types. Given previous research, we predicted that infants would show significantly more attention on trials during which looking produced IDS, but that this preference would b...Continue Reading

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