TauG-Guidance Of Neonatal Vocalizing

Abstract

A theory of action control (General Tau Theory) is applied to analyzing the vocalizations of human neonates. A central aspect of the theory, which is supported by experimental evidence across various actions and species, is that the trajectories of competent skilled actions follow a particular temporal pattern, which is described by the mathematical function, tauG. It was found that the acoustic waveform of vocalizations of healthy, full-term babies followed the tauG pattern with high precision. We conclude that healthy full-term neonates can be born with the ability to tauG-guide their vocalizations.