A study that questioned earlier findings
Vocal development in a large-scale crosslinguistic corpus
Margaret Cychosz, Alejandrina Cristia, Elika Bergelson, Marisa Casillas, Gladys Baudet, Anne S. Warlaumont, Camila Scaff, Lisa Yankowitz, Amanda Seidl · 2021 · Developmental Science
- Children
- 49 babies and toddlers
- Where
- Five communities with different languages and cultures
- Ages
- 1 to 36 months
- How
- Day-long audio recordings at home. Volunteers listened to short clips and marked whether they contained babble.
- What it found
- Babble became a steadily bigger share of children's sounds as they grew, passing the level researchers use for "has started babbling" at around 7 months.
- Limits
- A small group of children, and the volunteer listeners agreed with each other less than trained experts do. We read the summary, not yet the full paper.