Cox and colleagues’ recently published research on constancies found in baby talk regardless of language being spoken raises interesting questions about cross cultural sound experiences. The researchers share that “When speaking to infants, adults often produce speech that differs systematically from that directed to other adults. To quantify the acoustic properties of this speech style across a wide variety of languages and cultures, we extracted results from empirical studies on the acoustic features of infant-directed speech. We analysed data from 88 unique studies (734 effect sizes) on the following five acoustic parameters that have been systematically examined in the literature: fundamental frequency (f0), f0 variability, vowel space area, articulation rate and vowel duration. . . . analyses indicated that f0, articulation rate and vowel duration became more similar to adult-directed speech over time, whereas f0 variability and vowel space area exhibited stability throughout development.”
Christopher Cox, Christina Bergmann, Emma Fowler, Tamar Keren-Portnoy, Andreas Roepstorff, Greg Bryant, and Riccardo Fusaroli. 2022. “A Systematic Review and Bayesian Meta-Analysis of the Acoustic Features of Infant-Directed Speech.” Nature Human Behaviour, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01452-1