Vocalizations of infants (9—11 months old) in response to musical and linguistic stimuli

This study analyzes infant vocal responses in order to determine whether infants exposed to both linguistic and musical stimuli exhibit different types of vocalizations in response to those two different kinds of stimulation. Twenty-one infants, from 9 to 11 months of age, were observed in four weekly sessions over the period of a month. Each session consisted of two presentations: musical, in which the experimenter sang, and linguistic, in which the experimenter narrated poems. Infants’ vocalizations were recorded and submitted to aural and acoustic analysis. The results showed that infants’ vocalizations in response to both presentations displayed different characteristics of duration and vocal extension. Infant vocalizations in response to musical stimuli consisted predominantly of isolated sounds, with a high percentage of first and third steps of the scale of the musical stimuli as well as a predominance of melodic intervals and contours outlining important scalar steps of the stimuli. Descending intervals were also a characteristic of infant vocal production in response to musical stimuli.