How adults understand what young children say

Children’s early speech often bears little resemblance to that of adults, and yet parents and other caregivers are able to interpret that speech and react accordingly. Here we investigate how adult listeners’ inferences reflect sophisticated beliefs about what children are trying to communicate, as...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature human behaviour 2023-12, Vol.7 (12), p.2111-2125
Main Authors: Meylan, Stephan C., Foushee, Ruthe, Wong, Nicole H., Bergelson, Elika, Levy, Roger P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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4014/4004
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Acknowledgment
Adult
Adult language
Adults
Bayes Theorem
Bayesian analysis
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Caregivers
Child
Child, Preschool
Children
Cognition
Communication
Experimental Psychology
Humans
Language
Language acquisition
Language Development
Life Sciences
Listeners
Mathematical models
Microeconomics
Native language acquisition
Neurosciences
Personality and Social Psychology
Speech
Speech Perception
Word recognition
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Summary:Children’s early speech often bears little resemblance to that of adults, and yet parents and other caregivers are able to interpret that speech and react accordingly. Here we investigate how adult listeners’ inferences reflect sophisticated beliefs about what children are trying to communicate, as well as how children are likely to pronounce words. Using a Bayesian framework for modelling spoken word recognition, we find that computational models can replicate adult interpretations of children’s speech only when they include strong, context-specific prior expectations about the messages that children will want to communicate. This points to a critical role of adult cognitive processes in supporting early communication and reveals how children can actively prompt adults to take actions on their behalf even when they have only a nascent understanding of the adult language. We discuss the wide-ranging implications of the powerful listening capabilities of adults for theories of first language acquisition. The authors use a computational model of word recognition to show that adults’ interpretation of young children’s speech depends heavily on beliefs about what children are likely to say.
ISSN:2397-3374
2397-3374
DOI:10.1038/s41562-023-01698-3