Paralinguistic Features of Adult Speech to Infants and Small Children

JACOBSON, JOSEPH L.; BOERSMA, DAVID C.; FIELDS, ROBERT B.; and OLSON, KAREN L. Paralinguistic Features of Adult Speech to Infants and Small Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54, 436-442. The propensity to raise and vary the pitch of one's voice when addressing an infant or small child was investigated in a sample of 16 male and 16 female adults, half of whom were married with children and half of whom had never married and never had children.