Poster #119 - Teaching in Noise: Parental Speech and Children’s Learning of Words in Noisy and Quiet Environments

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

Children’s learning environments are commonly full of noise and distractions; however, it is well-documented that young children have more difficulty recognizing speech in noise than adults (e.g. Nozza et al., 1991; Nozza et al., 1990). In order to learn new words in the context of background noise, young children must overcome the added challenges of separating the target speech stream from the noise and selectively attending to that stream.

Infant-directed speech (IDS) could potentially ease either or both of these additional challenges. Its prosodic characteristics could make it more acoustically distinct from background voices (typically using adult-directed speech, or ADS), aiding in children’s segregation of competing speech streams. IDS has also been well-documented to enhance children’s attention compared to ADS (e.g. Fernald 1985), potentially helping children avoid auditory distractions. If caregivers are likely to produce more exaggerated IDS in noisy environments, and if children are more likely to learn from adults who adjust their speech in this way, this could be an important aspect of how children overcome the challenge of learning language in noise.

Newman (2003) examined prosodic differences in parents’ speech as they taught words to their children in noisy and quiet environments, and found several characteristics of IDS were heightened in noise; however, task demands in their test of children’s learning limited their ability to draw conclusions about whether these modifications were helpful to learners. The present study expands on this work with new target words (selected to contain the same point vowel) and a preferential looking task as a test of children’s learning. Participants were 24 dyads of mothers and their 23-month-old children. Parents were given two stuffed toys - a beaver and a peacock - one at a time, and were told to teach their child the words for these animals as they played. One of the words was taught in quiet, and the other with low-level multi-talker babble in the background. Afterwards, children’s learning of the two words was assessed via a preferential looking task, in which photos of the beaver and peacock were presented with matched familiarized toys whose labels were not taught (hedgehog and seahorse).

Twenty of the 23-month-olds (M=22.95 mos; SD=0.47; 14 females) completed the preferential looking task after the playsessions. Results indicate above-chance learning of the words taught in quiet (t (19) = 3.50, p < 0.01) and in noise (t (19) = 2.93, p < 0.01) (Fig. 1). However, individual performance varied greatly (Fig. 2). Ongoing analyses of the playsessions will examine differences in parents’ speech between the noisy and quiet conditions, and whether children whose parents alter their speech more greatly are more successful learners in noise. Planned analyses include prosodic characteristics such as average pitch and pitch variability (in replication of Newman (2003)), whether parents repeat target words more frequently in the context of noise, and whether parents pronounce target words more clearly in noisy environments (i.e. whether their vowels are hyperarticulated in noise).

Authors

• Emily Shroads, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

• Rochelle Newman, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author