Canonical babbling during vocal turn taking and independent vocal play

Abstract

There is a growing body of research emphasizing the role of social and endogenous motivations in human development. The present study evaluated canonical babbling across the second-half year of life using all-day recordings of 98 infants participating in a longitudinal study. Canonical babbling ratios were calculated from human coding along with Likert-scale ratings on vocal turn taking and vocal play in each segment. Ratios across all infants were significantly elevated during high turn taking and also during high vocal play. We conclude that both social and endogenous motivations may drive infants tendencies to produce their most advanced vocal forms.