TY - JOUR
T1 - Who's my little monkey? Effects of infant-directed speech on visual retention in infant rhesus macaques
AU - Slonecker, Emily M.
AU - Simpson, Elizabeth A.
AU - Suomi, Stephen J.
AU - Paukner, Annika
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Division of Intramural Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Special thanks to Dr Rochelle Newman for supplying the audio samples used in this research, Dr Stefano Kaburu for assisting with study design, Kristen Byers and Ashley Murphy for assisting with data collection, and all other animal care and research staff at the NIH Animal Center.
PY - 2018/3
Y1 - 2018/3
N2 - Both human and nonhuman primate adults use infant-directed facial and vocal expressions across many contexts when interacting with infants (e.g., feeding, playing). This infant-oriented style of communication, known as infant-directed speech (IDS), seems to benefit human infants in numerous ways, including facilitating language acquisition. Given the variety of contexts in which adults use IDS, we hypothesized that IDS supports learning beyond the linguistic domain and that these benefits may extend to nonhuman primates. We exposed 2.5-month-old rhesus macaque infants (N = 15) to IDS, adult-directed speech (ADS), and a non-social control (CTR) during a video presentation of unrelated stimuli. After a 5- or 60-minute delay, infants were shown the familiar video side-by-side with a novel video. Infants exhibited a novelty preference after the 5-minute delay, but not after the 60-minute delay, in the ADS and CTR conditions, and a novelty preference in the IDS condition only after the 60-minute delay. These results are the first to suggest that exposure to IDS affects infants’ long-term memory, even in non-linguistic animals.
AB - Both human and nonhuman primate adults use infant-directed facial and vocal expressions across many contexts when interacting with infants (e.g., feeding, playing). This infant-oriented style of communication, known as infant-directed speech (IDS), seems to benefit human infants in numerous ways, including facilitating language acquisition. Given the variety of contexts in which adults use IDS, we hypothesized that IDS supports learning beyond the linguistic domain and that these benefits may extend to nonhuman primates. We exposed 2.5-month-old rhesus macaque infants (N = 15) to IDS, adult-directed speech (ADS), and a non-social control (CTR) during a video presentation of unrelated stimuli. After a 5- or 60-minute delay, infants were shown the familiar video side-by-side with a novel video. Infants exhibited a novelty preference after the 5-minute delay, but not after the 60-minute delay, in the ADS and CTR conditions, and a novelty preference in the IDS condition only after the 60-minute delay. These results are the first to suggest that exposure to IDS affects infants’ long-term memory, even in non-linguistic animals.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85007495674&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85007495674&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/desc.12519
DO - 10.1111/desc.12519
M3 - Article
C2 - 28032454
AN - SCOPUS:85007495674
VL - 21
JO - Developmental Science
JF - Developmental Science
SN - 1363-755X
IS - 2
M1 - e12519
ER -