Monkey hear, monkey do

We learn today from research out of the University of Chicago that monkeys, like humans, use a special form of speech to communicate with their infants. In other words, baby talk:

"The acoustic structure of particular monkey vocalizations called girneys may be adaptively designed to attract young infants and engage their attention, similar to how the acoustic structure of human motherese, or baby talk, allows adults to visually or socially engage with infants."

As Carnegie Mellon psychologist Erik Thiessen has discovered, in humans, baby talk--or more properly, infant-directed speech--helps babies learn to talk sooner. Infant-directed speech is characterized by short, simple sentences coupled with higher pitch and exaggerated intonation. Thiessen's research shows that infants who are spoken to in this manner learn to identify words more quickly than infants who are spoken to in normal adult speech. Thiessen thinks that this may help to explain why infants and young children appear to be so much more adept than adults at learning languages.

Jonathan Potts