Babbling is a stage in child development and a state in
language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...
during which an
infant
An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...
appears to be experimenting with uttering articulate sounds, but does not yet
produce
Produce is a generalized term for many farm-produced crops, including fruits and vegetables (grains, oats, etc. are also sometimes considered ''produce''). More specifically, the term ''produce'' often implies that the products are fresh and g ...
any recognizable words. Babbling begins shortly after birth and progresses through several stages as the infant's repertoire of sounds expands and vocalizations become more speech-like. Infants typically begin to produce recognizable words when they are around 12 months of age, though babbling may continue for some time afterward.
Babbling can be seen as a precursor to
language development
Language development in humans is a process starting early in life. Infants start without knowing a language, yet by 10 months, babies can distinguish speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begin ...
or simply as vocal experimentation. The physical structures involved in babbling are still being developed in the first year of a child's life.
This continued physical development is responsible for some of the changes in abilities and variations of sound babies can produce. Abnormal developments such as certain medical conditions, developmental delays, and hearing impairments may interfere with a child's ability to babble normally. Though there is still disagreement about the uniqueness of
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
to humans, babbling is not unique to the human species.
Typical development
Babbling is a stage in language acquisition. Babbles are separated from language because they do not convey meaning or refer to anything specific like words do. Human
infants
An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...
are not necessarily excited or upset when babbling; they may also babble spontaneously and incessantly when they are emotionally calm.
The sounds of babbling are produced before an infant begins to construct recognizable
words
A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...
.
This can be partly attributed to the immaturity of the
vocal tract
The vocal tract is the cavity in human bodies and in animals where the sound produced at the sound source (larynx in mammals; syrinx (biology), syrinx in birds) is filtered.
In birds it consists of the Vertebrate trachea, trachea, the Syrinx (bio ...
and
neuromusculature at this age in life.
Infants first begin vocalizing by crying, followed by cooing and then vocal play. These first forms of sound production are the easiest for children to use because they contain natural, reflexive, mostly
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
sounds.
Babbling is assumed to occur in all children acquiring language.
Particularly it has been studied in English, Italian,
Korean, French,
Spanish,
Japanese
and Swedish.
Infants across the world follow general trends in babbling tendencies. Differences that do appear are the result of the infants' sensitivity to the characteristics of the language(s) they are exposed to. Infants mimick the
prosody of the language(s) they are exposed to. They use
intonation patterns and timing that matches the characteristics of their parent language.
Infants also babble using the consonants and vowels that occur most frequently in their parent language. Most babbling consists of a small number of sounds, which suggests the child is preparing the basic sounds necessary to speak the language to which he is exposed.
The
consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
that babbling infants produce tend to be any of the following : . The following consonants tend to be infrequently produced during
phonological development
Phonological development refers to how children learn to organize sounds into meaning or language (phonology) during their stages of growth.
Sound is at the beginning of language learning. Children have to learn to distinguish different sounds and ...
: . The complexity of the sounds that infants produce makes them difficult to categorize, but the above rules tend to hold true regardless of the language to which children are exposed.
The sounds produced in babble have been categorised relative to their components. For example, babble may be broken down into syllables that contain a consonant and a vowel (CV syllables) and syllables that contain only a vowel sound (non-CV syllables). These components have been studied in relation to speech development in children, and have been found to relate to future speech outcomes.
If babbling occurs during the first year of life, it can typically be concluded that the child is developing speech normally. As babies grow and change, their vocalizations will change as well.
Timeline of typical vocal development
Infants follow a general timeline of vocal developments in childhood.
This timeline provides a general outline of expected developments from birth to age one. Babbling usually lasts 6–9 months in total.
The babbling period ends at around 12 months because it is the age when first words usually occur. However, individual children can show large variability, and this timeline is only a guideline.
From birth to 1 month, babies produce mainly pleasure sounds, cries for assistance, and responses to the human voice.
Around 2 months, babies can distinguish between different speech sounds, and can make “goo”ing sounds.
Around 3 months, babies begin making elongated vowel sounds "oooo" "aaaa", and will respond vocally to speech of others. They continue to make predominantly vowel sounds.
Around 4 months, babies may vary their pitch, and imitate tones in adult speech.
Around 5 months, babies continue to experiment with sound, imitating some sounds made by adults.
Around 6 months, babies vary volume, pitch and rate. When infants are 6 months old they are finally able to control the opening and closing of the vocal tract, and upon obtaining this ability, infants begin to distinguish between the different sounds of vowels and consonants. This age is often distinguished as the beginning of the ''canonical stage''. During the canonical stage, the babbling involves
reduplicated
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwar ...
sounds containing alternations of vowels and consonants, for example, "baba" or "bobo".
Reduplicated babbling (also known as canonical babbling) consists of repeated syllables consisting of consonant and a vowel such as "da da da da" or "ma ma ma ma".
Around 7 months, babies can produce several sounds in one breath, and they also recognize different tones and inflections in other speakers.
Around 8 months, babies can repeat
emphasized syllables.
They imitate
gestures
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or ot ...
and tonal quality of adult speech. They also produce variegated babbling. Variegated babbles contain mixes of consonant vowel combinations such as "ka da by ba mi doy doy".
Variegated babbling differs from reduplicated babbling in terms of the variation and complexity of syllables that are produced.
Around 9–10 months, babies can imitate non speech sounds, and speech-like sounds if they are in the child's repertoire of sounds.
Infant babbling begins to resemble the native language of a child. The final stage is known as conversational babbling, or the "jargon stage". Usually occurring by about ten months of age, the jargon stage is defined as "pre-linguistic vocalizations in which infants use adult-like
stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
and
intonation". The general structure of the syllables that they are producing is very closely related to the sounds of their native language and this form of babbling significantly predicts the form of early words.
Around 11 months, babies imitate
inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
s,
rhythms
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recur ...
, and expressions of speakers.
By 12 months, babies typically can speak one or more words. These words now
refer
Refer or referral may refer to:
*Reference, a relation of designation or linking between objects
**Word-sense disambiguation, when a single term may refer to multiple meanings
*Referral marketing, to personally recommend, endorse, and pass a perso ...
to the entity which they name; they are used to gain attention or for a specific purpose.
Children continue to produce jargon babbles beyond their first words.
Manual babbling
Manual babbling Manual babbling is a linguistic phenomenon that has been observed in deaf children and hearing children born to deaf parents who have been exposed to sign language. Manual babbles are characterized by repetitive movements that are confined to a limi ...
is structurally identical to vocal babbling in its development.
Just as hearing and/or speaking infants babble with their mouths, infants who grow up with a
sign language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...
babble with their hands.
If a hearing infant has deaf and/or mute parents or parents who otherwise use a sign language, they will still imitate the signs that they see their parents displaying. This is evidence that manual babbling is possible in both hearing and deaf infants, and in both speaking and mute infants.
All babies imitate with their hands the movements that they see. Typical
gesture
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or ot ...
s for example are raising arms to be lifted up, or grabbing/reaching to indicate wanting a bottle; these are used referentially.
In addition, infants who grow up with a sign language begin to make gestures that are distinct from all other hand movements and gestures.
After it was established that infants could babble with their hands and their mouths, the patterns in which productions occurred were studied. Speaking and signing infants follow very similar maturational paths in language acquisition.
Both go through a number of stages, and exhibit similar complexity in their babbling sequences. In studies where deaf and hearing children were compared, children learning sign language produced more multi-movement manual babbling than children who were not learning a sign language.
There are three main components of manual babbling. The hand gestures contain a restricted set of phonetic units, show a syllabic organization, and are used without reference or meaning. This is comparable to aspects of vocal babbling as mentioned above.
It is difficult to study manual babbling as often the manual activity can be mistaken as gestures rather than signs. When signing children are in fact babbling it will most often take place in front of their torso in a designated area that is called the phonetic space.
One of the most common forms of manual babbling is the extension and spreading of all fingers. This babble is also one of the first indicators that an infant will begin to make in manual communication.
Children are able to produce signs correctly, which is important since many articulation tendencies of manual babbling transfer to the children’s early sign production.
Children acquire signs for the same concepts as speaking children's words, and in the same stage of development.
Transition from babbling to language
Two hypotheses have been devised in order to explain how babbling is related to language development.
* The Discontinuity Hypothesis - This early hypothesis suggests that babbling has absolutely no relationship to language development.
If true, infants would produce a full range of random sounds in no particular order during the babbling stage. However, it has been demonstrated that early babbling is quite limited.
Supporters of this hypothesis also thought that children might drop certain sounds only to pick them up again in later months. Supporters proposed it would be possible for babies to incorrectly and inconsistently use sounds that they had already mastered in the early babbling stages later in life or even lose sounds altogether before learning how to speak. The hypothesis also implies that when children finally reach the age where they are able to learn their native language, they develop phonological sounds in an orderly manner. Over time, infants will relearn sounds and develop words in a specific language. Current evidence does not support these claims.
Contemporary research supports the notion that babbling is directly related to the development of language as discussed in The Continuity Hypothesis.
*The Continuity Hypothesis - According to this hypothesis, babbling is a direct forerunner to language. At first, infants produce universal sounds that exist in all areas of the world and in all languages. Reduplicated canonical babbling
produces a number of sounds but only some of them ("ma ma" and "da da", turning into "mommy" and "daddy", respectively) are recognized as meaningful and thus reinforced by caregivers and parents, while the others are abandoned as meaningless (this is the argument in, for instance,
Susanne Langer
Susanne Katherina Langer (; ''née'' Knauth; December 20, 1895 – July 17, 1985) was an American philosopher, writer, and educator known for her theories on the influences of art on the mind. She was one of the earliest American women to achieve ...
's ''
Philosophy in a New Key
''Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art'' is the main work of American philosopher Susanne K. Langer, first published in 1941. In it she declares that "Symbolism was the ‘new key’ to understanding how the hu ...
''). This hypothesis agrees with the claim that the anatomical changes of the vocal tract are very important, but suggests that the social environment in which an infant is raised has a greater influence on the development of language. Infants pay close attention to their caregivers' reactions and use their feedback as approval for the sounds that they are making. This reinforcement through feedback helps infants to focus their attention on specific features of sound. Social feedback facilitates faster learning and earlier production of a variety of advanced words.
There is evidence that babbling varies depending on the linguistic environment in which a baby is raised. Current babbling research supports The Continuity Hypothesis. For example, it has been noted that infants raised in French speaking environments display greater amounts of rising intonation in comparison to infants raised in English speaking environments. This is likely due to the differences between French and English intonations while speaking. The ordering of consonants and vowels in the babbling of English, French, Swedish and Japanese infants also appears to resemble that of their native language. These findings support another hypothesis, the “babbling drift hypothesis” in which infant babbling resembles the phonetic characteristics of a child's native language through exposure to speech. When babies are exposed to two languages, their babbles resemble the language that they are most exposed to. The dominant language is considered to be the one that children have the most exposure to. Most often infants do not produce a blend of language styles while babbling however, may switch between languages. Sometimes infants may choose which language style they prefer to babble in based upon particular features.
The babbling drift hypothesis provides further support for The Continuity Hypothesis.
Physiology of babbling
The human mouth moves in distinct ways during speech production. When producing each individual sound out loud, humans use different parts of their mouths, as well as different methods to produce particular sounds. During the beginnings of babbling, infants tend to have greater mouth openings on the right side. This finding suggests that babbling is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain. The
larynx
The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an organ in the top of the neck involved in breathing, producing sound and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. The opening of larynx into pharynx known as the laryngeal inlet is about ...
, or voicebox, is originally high in the throat which allows the baby to continue to breathe while swallowing. It descends during the first year of life, allowing the
pharynx
The pharynx (plural: pharynges) is the part of the throat behind the mouth and nasal cavity, and above the oesophagus and trachea (the tubes going down to the stomach and the lungs). It is found in vertebrates and invertebrates, though its struc ...
to develop and facilitates the production of adult-like
speech
Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...
sounds.
[Naomi S. Baron, ''Growing up with Language: How Children Learn to Talk'' (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992), p. 41-43, ]
Reduplicated babbling (such as bababa) involves a rhythmic opening and closing of the jaw. According to the Frame Dominance Theory, when the
mandible
In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower tooth, teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movabl ...
(jaw) is elevated, a
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
sound will be produced. When the mandible is lowered, a
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
-like sound is produced. Therefore, during a reduplicated sequence of sounds, the consonant and vowels are alternated as the mandible elevates and depresses. The opening and closing of the mouth alone will not produce babbling, and
phonation
The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defini ...
(or voicing) is necessary during the movement in order to create a meaningful sound. Other important oral structures involved in articulation, such as the tongue, lips and teeth remain in a stable resting position during babbling.
Sometimes during the babbling period, the motions can be made without any vocalization at all.
Signing infants produce manual babbling through similar rhythmic alternations, but they perform with their hands instead of their mouths. As a baby goes beyond the reduplicated sequences of babbling, they exhibit equal sized mouth or hand openings on the right and left sides.
Abnormal development
Typically by 6 months of age, all normally developing children will babble. However, infants with certain medical conditions or developmental delays may exhibit a delay or an absence of babbling. For example, infants who have had a
tracheotomy
Tracheotomy (, ), or tracheostomy, is a surgical airway management procedure which consists of making an incision (cut) on the anterior aspect (front) of the neck and opening a direct airway through an incision in the trachea (windpipe). The ...
typically do not babble because they are unable to phonate.
Following decannulation, it has been found that these infants do produce more vocalizations, but the sounds or syllables are not as diverse as those found in typically developing infant's canonical babbling behaviour. Infants with severe
apraxia
Apraxia is a motor disorder caused by damage to the brain (specifically the posterior parietal cortex or corpus callosum), which causes difficulty with motor planning to perform tasks or movements. The nature of the damage determines the disorder' ...
may not babble, and may fail to produce first words. Communication by infants with apraxia may instead be in the form of grunting and pointing.
Infants with
autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
may show a delay in babbling, and in some cases it may be completely absent.
Babbling in children with autism tends to occur less frequently than in typically developing children, and with a smaller range of syllables produced during the canonical babbling stage. Babbling may also be delayed in individuals who are born with
Down syndrome
Down syndrome or Down's syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It is usually associated with physical growth delays, mild to moderate intellectual dis ...
. The canonical stage may emerge 2 months later for individuals with Down syndrome compared to other infants, although, when produced, it is similar to babbling in typically developing infants.
Vocal babbling in deaf infants
Research has been conducted to determine whether or not infants with impaired hearing can demonstrate typical vocal sounds. Babbling can appear at the same age and in similar forms in hearing and deaf child, however, further continuation of babbling and speech development depends upon the ability for the child to hear themselves. For this reason, deaf children stop babbling vocally earlier than hearing children. Babbling should appear if the child is exposed to language, but vocal babbling can be delayed or non-existent for deaf children.
It is not clear whether spoken language can develop fully without auditory experience.
Deaf children are not only significantly delayed in spoken language development in comparison to their hearing counterparts, but they also produce fewer noises.
This suggests that auditory experience is necessary in spoken language development. Some researchers have taken these findings as evidence against the hypothesis that language is an
innate human capability.
A number of solutions have been used for hearing-impaired humans to gain auditory experience, one of which is
hearing aids
A hearing aid is a device designed to improve hearing by making sound audible to a person with hearing loss. Hearing aids are classified as medical devices in most countries, and regulated by the respective regulations. Small audio amplifiers su ...
; they can be used to help infants reach babbling stages earlier.
Cochlear implants
A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech unde ...
have also been tested. Once the surgical implantation is complete, an infant has the opportunity to experience spoken language input. Once language has been heard, the infant begins to babble and speak in rhythmic patterns just as hearing infants do.
Evidence across species
Though there is disagreement about the uniqueness of
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
to humans, babbling is not unique to the human species.
Many animals produce similar ranges of sounds to human infants. These ranges of sounds are used in the young of many species to experiment with sound-making capabilities, or to practice for future vocal behavior. Similar to human infants, animal babbling is restricted by physiological development.
Songbirds
Not only are
songbird
A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 500 ...
and human language parallel regarding neural and molecular factors, they also are similar in how their communication is initially produced. Observations about these similarities can be traced back to
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
and his studies.
Avian
Avian may refer to:
*Birds or Aves, winged animals
*Avian (given name) (russian: Авиа́н, link=no), a male forename
Aviation
*Avro Avian, a series of light aircraft made by Avro in the 1920s and 1930s
*Avian Limited, a hang glider manufacture ...
and
mammalian
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class (biology), class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in Female#Mammalian female, females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a ...
brains are similar in form and connectivity and there may even be a
gene
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...
that is relevant to speech found in both organisms. The learning of a song is produced through a mix of interaction, experience, and predisposition. Young songbirds will imitate their species' call when presented with songs from their own and another species. They are physically capable of producing either song, but do not. Humans learn language through similar means, which is why this early vocalization in songbirds is considered babbling.
Songbirds produce varieties of immature songs that are referred to as babbling because the immature songs precede those that are fully developed. As with humans, if these songs are reinforced with positive social feedback, they are more likely to recur. Other conspecifics provide feedback, especially the females in species for which only the males produce song. If females provide more social signals as feedback, males will develop more mature songs at a faster rate than other male birds. Young birds require reinforcement from adults in order to finalize their songs. Another relation to human infants is that the amount of vocalizations is not key, but rather the quality of the sounds that is retained and resembles the final produce of language.
The physiology of the animal is important. The properties of the ear and vocal tract, as well as the brain regions used in analyzing and processing information are critical determinants of how song is interpreted and later produced. In studies using isolated birds that have not had exposure to song, they produce an abnormal ‘isolate song’ that nevertheless contains species-specific aspects. This shows that the neural pathways have predetermined features that allow for such a phenomenon to occur. The pathways are able to allow for plasticity of the songs that can be learned in the future.
There is an important phase in development when song learning is best accomplished. This phase is called the ‘sensitive period’ and the amount of change that a songbird experiences in adulthood varies by species. Young birds have a production phase after a listening phase of development. The production of song is called ‘subsong’ where vocalizations resemble that of an adult as time passes. Memory for songs is able to form before the period where learning to sing occurs. Social interaction is important in vocal learning where non-singing females can even influence an infant through feedback.
Pygmy marmoset (''Cebuella pygmaea'')
Pygmy marmoset
Pygmy marmosets are two species of small New World monkeys in the genus ''Cebuella''. They are native to rainforests of the western Amazon Basin in South America. These primates are notable for being the smallest monkeys in the world, at just ov ...
s have been studied and found to produce complex vocalizations 2–3 weeks after birth. Both sexes are capable of creating calls at a rate of 3 calls/second and each bout of calls can last up to 6 or 7 minutes. A normal series of calls by a pygmy marmoset contains approximately 10 different call types. This variety of call forms produced by this creature is comparable to babbling in human infants for a number of reasons. Like reduplicative babbling in humans, the call is often repeated several times before a new sequence of sounds is produced. The vocalizations gain attention from caregivers and provide practice for future vocal behavior. For these reasons, pygmy marmoset calls are seen as babbling behavior.
There are a total of 16 call types in pygmy marmoset babbling language. Different calls serve different survival functions such as when desiring food, social interaction or during times of alarm. As human infants have, marmoset babies have higher rates of social interaction when producing babbling sounds. During the juvenile age, marmosets often regress back to babbling stages if a new infant is born. It is suggested that their production of babbling calls increases because they are seeking attention and social interaction. Another babbling occurrence during the juvenile age is the addition of territorial calls and mild threat vocalizations. Although babbling is important for practising adult calls during the juvenile age, babbling decreases with age in pygmy marmosets. Overall, babbling progresses through a series of stages from infancy to adulthood and slowly leads to the construction of adult calls.
Sac-winged bat (''Saccopteryx bilineata'')
Babbling-like behavior in songbirds, humans and some nonhuman primates has been previously researched, but it has not been researched until recently in non-primate mammals. The
sac-winged bat
Emballonuridae is a family of microbats, many of which are referred to as sac-winged or sheath-tailed bats. They are widely distributed in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. The earliest fossil records are from the Eocene.
Descr ...
(''Saccopteryx bilineata'') is a social creature and the vocalizations that it produces depend on the social situation that the animal is in. This bat has a large repertoire of vocalizations with males being more vocal than females.
Echolocation pulses, barks, chatters, and screeches are used in various social situations including courtship and territorial defense. Infants produce isolation calls if their mothers are absent, but the pups also produce vocalizations that mirror those of adults. Both sexes of infants babble, even though as an adult, the vocalizations are solely produced by males. Social context, mothers, and surrounding bats do not influence pups because the multiple vocalizations are combined regardless of the situation. Since there is not a social aspect correlated with the vocalizations, the productions of the sounds suggest that the pups vocalize for training. The pups repeat and combine adult vocalizations so that they resemble babbling in what humans, other primates and some songbirds do as infants. However, while human babbling increases social interactions, there are no social responses to babbling in bats. Babbling is common in infants that have a large repertoire of adult vocalizations to learn and this is seen in the pups of sac-winged bat.
See also
*
Baby talk
Baby talk is a type of speech associated with an older person speaking to a child or infant. It is also called caretaker speech, infant-directed speech (IDS), child-directed speech (CDS), child-directed language (CDL), caregiver register, parent ...
*
Crib talk
Crib talk or crib speech is pre-sleep monologue made by young children while in bed. This starts somewhere around one-and-a-half years and usually ends by about two-and-a-half years of age, though children can continue longer.Weir RH. (1962). Lang ...
*
Critical period
In developmental psychology and developmental biology, a critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli. If, for some reason, the org ...
*
Glossolalia
Speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, is a practice in which people utter words or speech-like sounds, often thought by believers to be languages unknown to the speaker. One definition used by linguists is the fluid vocalizing of sp ...
*
Motor babbling
*
Hypocorism
A hypocorism ( or ; from Ancient Greek: (), from (), 'to call by pet names', sometimes also ''hypocoristic'') or pet name is a name used to show affection for a person. It may be a diminutive form of a person's name, such as ''Izzy'' for I ...
References
{{Infants and their care
Language acquisition
Articles containing video clips
Child development