Duration and Voice Quality of Early Infant Vocalizations

Conclusions Based on the current results, the inconsistent pattern of vocal duration development found previously can be reconciled when voice quality properties of vocalizations are taken into account. A nonlinear curve is evident when a broad corpus of infant vocalizations is used, whereas a narrow corpus containing predominantly modal vocalizations displays a linear trend. The results demonstrate the necessity of including nonmodal voice qualities in infant duration experiments so as to not overstate the linear nature of duration increases.
Source: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research