By: Louise Perry

Published: Jun 8, 2023

When we get home from the supermarket, our two-year-old likes to assist with taking the groceries out from underneath his stroller and carrying them to the kitchen. He will pick up a carton of milk and heave it towards the fridge like an atlas stone. “Well done darling” I say to him in a pitch slightly higher than usual, “you’re being so helpful.” 

Of course he isn’t actually being helpful. In fact, he’s slowing down the process of unpacking and risking an enormous milk spillage all over the kitchen floor. But my goal is encouragement and kindness – he’s only two, bless him, and that carton is awfully big and heavy. 

My husband regards these exercises with more of a gentle briskness. “Thanks mate” he’ll say in his usual tone of voice, excising my white lie. In this, I’ve learnt, my husband is typical of other men. In a 2015 study led by Mark VanDam, a professor in the Speech and Hearing Sciences department at Washington State University Spokane, researchers outfitted preschoolers and their parents with recording devices to monitor social interactions over the course of a normal day. The mothers, they found:

… used higher pitch and varied their pitch more when interacting with their child than with adults. The fathers, on the other hand, did not show the same pattern, and instead talked to their children using intonation patterns more like when they talked to other adults.

As an instinctive speaker of so-called ‘motherese’ – that is, baby talk – I find that when our son mispronounces a word (‘tawtah’ for ‘water’ or ‘mulack’ for ‘milk’) I will automatically echo it back to him, while my husband will automatically respond with the correct pronunciation. These differences persist despite the fact that we share childcare almost exactly equally within our family. 

It turns out we’re not alone in this sex difference, and that it may well have some adaptive purpose. "We think that maybe fathers are doing things that are conducive to their children's learning but in a different way,” writes VanDam, “the parents are complementary to their children's language learning.” Mothers speak down to children, while fathers speak to them like equals – in combination, these two kinds of stimuli promote the development of adult language. 

The adoption of motherese is an instinct that, in its correct context, is both comforting and developmentally useful. But it can also, in some circumstances, be dysfunctional. And, as I have become more and more fluent in it, I have started to notice that motherese is no longer confined to the nursery or the classroom, but is now to be found also in public life. Not in its full expression – “have you got a boo-boo, honey?” – but in a more subtle form. 

I heard a lot of motherese, for instance, in the responses to philosopher Kathleen Stock’s appearance this week at the Oxford Union – a political event considered significant enough to attract commentary from the Prime Minister and rolling updates on the homepages of several national newspapers.

Students at risk of being traumatised by Stock’s mild-mannered, centre-left brand of politics were ushered towards ‘welfare rooms’ offering ear plugs, bottles of water, and snacks. “The Union has made the choice to amplify a voice that actively harms trans students, trans people and the trans community at large” wrote one student politician, “we’re tired of [the Union’s] refusal to listen to the communities they hurt” insisted another. It was as if Stock was a rampaging bully on the playground, knocking other children to the ground, and her critics were leaping to the defence of the persecuted toddlers. 

Witnessing the backlash against her, you’d never guess that Stock’s only sin is to offer a careful academic critique of the doctrine of gender identity – that is, the claim that one can become a member of the opposite sex (or some other identity category in between) merely by force of will. As she reiterated in her Oxford Union speech, to reject this doctrine is not to deny the humanity of trans people, but rather to balance their interests against those of other people, particularly women. 

But I am by no means the first to notice an unexpected feature of the crowds that formed outside the Oxford Union this week, and indeed all of the crowds that congregate in support of trans activism (now a regular occurrence, and not just in the Anglosphere). While the occasional acts of outright aggression are overwhelmingly committed by men, the crowds in general are mostly composed of young women. 

Polling reveals this to be a wider pattern. In the UK, women – and particularly young women – are far more supportive of trans activism than are their male counterparts. The same gap can be seen in US polling. The public figures who have received the most flak for their criticisms of trans activism are disproportionately women – I’m thinking not only of Kathleen Stock, but also of JK Rowling – and yet so, too, are the movement’s most devoted allies. This is, in the main, an intra-female conflict. 

But if trans activism poses a threat to women’s interests – as Stock and Rowling insist that it does – then why have so many women come out in support of it? I want to propose two explanations for this seeming paradox. 

Firstly, in socioeconomic terms, the women who have the most to lose from the disintegration of female-only spaces – prisoners and domestic abuse victims, for instance – are not actually the same women who are draping themselves in blue and pink flags outside the Oxford Union. This is a textbook example of what Rob Henderson has termed a ‘luxury belief’ – an idea that confers status on the rich, while causing harm to the poor. 

But then I am begging the question, because why on earth would trans activism confer status on the rich, or indeed anyone? This is where we come to the second factor: the extraordinarily well-documented differences in personality that have been observed between male and female populations cross-culturally. 

Note that there is a crucial distinction to be drawn between average and absolute differences. It is not true that all men or all women exhibit only masculine or feminine personality traits, in the same way that not all women are short and not all men are tall – rather, average differences between the sexes are obvious only at the population level. 

One trait on which men and women differ substantially is agreeableness. To put it bluntly, women are usually nicer than men – that is, they are “more nurturing, tenderminded, and altruistic more often and to a greater extent than men,” as psychologist Professor Yanna Weisberg puts it. 

This nurturing instinct often finds its way into polling on political questions. For instance, a typical study from 2017 asked 3,014 college students the following question: “If you had to choose, which do you think is more important, a diverse and inclusive society or protecting free speech rights.” 61% of male students chose to prioritise free speech, compared with only 35% of female students – exactly what you would expect from two populations that differ in this most crucial of traits.  

Don’t think that I’m bashing agreeableness per se –  it’s one of those personality traits that really does offer advantages and disadvantages all along the spectrum. Disagreeable people are often rude, but they can also be refreshingly honest; agreeable people are often pleasant, but they are easily taken advantage of. Think of agreeableness as motherese: soothing and lovely in the right circumstances, cloying and foolish in the wrong ones.  

The problems arise when an agreeable style of politics gloms onto a group that seems to offer plentiful opportunities for babying. Right now, it is trans people who have found themselves in the hot seat (or the high chair). For just one example of this babying tendency in action, observe the progressive response when then-66 year old Caitlyn Jenner came out as trans (a response parodied exquisitely in a South Park episode titled ‘Stunning and Brave’). When Glamour honoured Jenner as the magazine’s 2015’ Woman of the Year' – despite the fact that Jenner had not yet lived as a woman for a full year – I couldn’t help but hear the high pitched notes of motherese (“you look so pretty sweetie”, “well done that was very brave.”) 

Observe, too, the trans celebrity Dylan Mulvaney’s recent appearance on Drew Barrymore’s talkshow, which culminated with Barrymore kneeling on the ground, looking Mulvaney straight in the eye, and offering a heartfelt pep talk on self-love. Some gender critical feminists looked at this scene and saw a woman prostrating herself before a man. What I saw was a mother kneeling down to reassure a young child – for some bizarre reason, Barrymore was speaking motherese to a grown adult on national TV. 

At the risk of stating the obvious, trans people are not babies. Nor are they pets. They do not need earplugs and snacks to withstand an academic discussion, and they do not need to be spoken to like toddlers. Real two-year-olds may benefit from the gentleness of motherese. The rest of us need to grow up.

==

https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The-Politics-of-the-Culture-Wars-in-Contemporary-Britain.pdf#page=57

Women are more likely than men to say a trans women should be able to enter a women’s refuge, favouring this by a 36-32 margin while men oppose it 40 to 30. In fact, across all 6 questions pertaining to the trans issue (Stock, Rowling, refuges, gender identity, pronouns, teaching biological sex), women are significantly more supportive of the trans rights position even when ideology is taken into account. Women even exceed LGBT identifiers in their support for the pro-trans position on many questions.

Why? Is this not against the female interest? The likely answer is that women are more likely to be cultural leftists than men across most of the 25 attitudinal items in the survey. The inclination to empathise and care for groups perceived as vulnerable best accounts for the pattern. The result of the empathy dynamic is that the gender-critical feminist position, while intellectually prominent, is still a contested view among women. Indeed, the largest source of opposition to greater trans access to women’s spaces comes from cultural conservatives.

This isn't a war between men and women, as some would like to assert.

It's really a war between different denominations of feminism. Like Catholicism vs Protestantism. Or Sunni vs Shi'a Islam.

One thing that's hilarious and worth pointing out: gender-critical feminists will sometimes say things along the lines of, well that agreeableness was socialized into women by "the patriarchy" to make them compliant. Which means they're denying the same evolved sex-based differences that they started off defending. Like claiming to be a Catholic while denying transubstantiation.

Either sex-differences are real, and can explain different participation rates in physics and kindergarten teaching, different career priorities and trajectories (and thus, the mythical "pay gap") and different work patterns as readily as they explain differences in swimming, cycling and weight-lifting performance, making "the patriarchy" as unnecessary as a god is to the existence of the universe... or they're not, and the gender-critical argument goes up in smoke in the flames of social constructivism. God can't be both good and unknowable.

Why are words for 'mother' similar in languages across the world??

The word for ‘mother’ is similar in languages all over the world!

English: mother, ma

Basque: ama

Spanish: madre

Maltese: omm

Mandarin: ma

Vietnamese: me

Hebrew: ima

Swahili: mama

They all have that /m/ sound in common. Not all languages have this (these are cherry-picked examples), but it’s way more common than we would expect from chance!

Y THO??

/m/ is one of the first sounds that infants learn how to make, along with /b/, /d/, and /n/. All of those sounds are much more common in words for 'mother' and 'father' across languages than would be expected by chance.

When parents hear their children experimenting with making their first sounds, they assume that they're trying to say 'mother' or 'father'. So in languages all across the world, words with those sounds in them become the words for 'mother' and 'father'.

Bonus Fact

mother, father, brother, and sister all end in -ter because that was a generic kinship suffix in Proto-Indo-European (the first language from which English and other Indo-European languages evolved from).

The Proto-Indo-European word mater 'mother' was actually ma + -ter. So even in Proto-Indo-European 6,000 years ago, we can see how the word for 'mother' came from baby talk, ma.

The sight of chubby baby cheeks is often enough to transform even the most committed curmudgeon into a babbling softie.

Sentences become shorter, sounds are exaggerated, and the overall pattern of speech is more singsong and musical.

Researchers have dubbed this “motherese,” or, more formally, “infant-directed speech.”

“We’re not changing the words that we’re saying, we’re changing the way that we’re saying them,” says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Hampshire College in Massachusetts.

Only a handful of other species have been shown to change their calls when addressing young, including zebra finches, rhesus macaques, and squirrel monkeys.

Now, Sayigh’s new study, based on three decades of data in Florida, reveals common bottlenose dolphins use motherese — one of the first times it’s been documented in a species other than humans.

It's a major discovery, agrees Rindy Anderson, a behavioral ecologist at Florida Atlantic University who was not involved with the research.

The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "suggests that using these modifications when communicating with young assists them in learning how to produce these calls themselves,” she says.

Talk to me

Learning language is hard. Yet infants, incredibly, sop up the verbal soup around them and learn how to construct sentences with the appropriate structure.

How? The answer has to do with how we intuitively talk to babies.

Making our sentences shorter strips away unnecessary words. Emphasizing sounds makes words clearer. And — importantly — we increase the pitch of our speech.

Studies have shown these vocal characteristics grab and hold the attention of children far better than normal adult-directed speech.

And when parents are coached on how to use motherese, their child babbles more and has a bigger vocabulary as a toddler.

Language scientists make an important distinction between motherese and what is commonly referred to as baby talk.

The latter, they say, consists of largely made-up words with inconsistent and incorrect grammar and syntax:

It’s the difference between telling a baby, “Look at that DOGGY!” and “Wook at dat widdle puppy-wuppy!”

That’s why the list of species that use the more accurate motherese has so far been limited.

“Vocal learning is actually very rare. Out of the millions of species that use sound to communicate, there’s just a few groups that must learn their vocal communication systems,” Anderson says.

Signature sounds

When Sayigh began working with a pod of wild bottlenose dolphins in Florida’s Sarasota Bay in the late 1980s, she observed that these marine mammals shared many characteristics with humans.

For instance, mothers and their offspring live within intricate social groups held together by a complex language of songs and whistles.

Over time, the biologist began to wonder whether females use motherese to communicate with their calves.

Bottlenose mothers nurse their young for two years, and the animals generally stay with her until they’re between three to six years old, learning how to hunt, navigate, and stay safe in the ocean.

Father dolphins generally aren’t involved in rearing their young.

Dolphin communication is profoundly different from how humans talk.

The most common dolphin vocalization is their signature whistle, a sound unique to each dolphin that serves as the cetacean equivalent of a “Hello, My Name is…” sticker.

Dolphins, however, don’t use another animal’s signature whistle to direct communication.

Instead, they repeat their own signature whistle and listen for another dolphin to respond with their own.

It’s analogous to your mother standing on your front porch and yelling her own name to summon her kids, says Kelly Jaakkola, a cognitive psychologist and marine mammal biologist at the nonprofit Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, Florida.

As part of their ongoing research, the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program performs regular veterinary exams on the wild dolphins, which have gotten used to the scientists’ presence.

During these exams, Sayigh and colleagues would sometimes attach a small recording device called a hydrophone to a mother dolphin’s forehead with a fist-size suction cup that the researchers later removed.

By analyzing recordings of 19 different female dolphins over 34 years, Sayigh found that the signature whistles of dolphin mothers had a greater range of frequencies — the high pitches were higher and the lows were lower — when their calves were nearby.

The high-pitched sounds are out of the range of human hearing.

Endless questions

To Jaakkola, who wasn’t part of the study, this work was “a fantastic first step.”

“The data here are beautiful,” she says. “The trick comes in possible interpretations of what’s happening.”

The work only looks at dolphin communication in one specific context, which means scientists can’t say definitively that the dolphins are speaking to their calves in motherese, Jaakkola says.

For instance, the results could be due to vocal changes in caused by lactation, or some other unknown variable.

However, in a 2017 study, researchers noticed an identical change in mother dolphins’ signature whistles while examining the effects of human-made noise, which lends support to the authors’ conclusions that the dolphins change their pitch as needed.

For Sayigh, the questions are endless — and fascinating.

“I just can't even articulate what an amazing project it is. I could spend three lifetimes there,” she says.

A tired sigh left Casey as he looked to the bundle in his arms, having finally gotten the four month old to sleep. They were a screamer, and did not go down with a fight; it's why Casey had offered to help out his neighbour in the first place, to give them a night to actually sleep. They were not kidding when they said their kid was fussy, but it wasn't anything 'Uncle Casey' couldn't handle. At least the kid was asleep, at last, and Casey couldn’t help but adorable. Despite the screaming, they were adorable. Grinning, he leans in close, idly beginning to baby talk the sleeping child, rambling and babbling absolute nonsense to them, even though they couldn’t hear it. It didn’t last long though, Casey soon finding himself joined by Raphael, 

Shoulders hunched the second he heard Raph's voice, Casey quickly holding up a finger as he spoke through a harsh whisper, 

 "Ssh, keep it down would'ya? I jus' got the kid t' sleep." 

He looks back to the child in question, thankfully, they're undisturbed. Looking back to Raph, Casey chuckles quietly, 

 "What? Nah, Button's 'ere aint my kid," Their name also wasn't Buttons, it merely being a nickname, "They're my neighbours from down the hall, I'm helpin' 'em out that's all," He shrugs it off, Casey just liked to help, "Kinda like how I help look after Angel, an' Ryan, an' the other kids on the block," He explains, "With Button's 'ere, I'm now Uncle Casey t' 'bout," He thinks for a second, "Twenty kids - yeah, that soun's 'bout right." 

 That was a lot, but Casey didn't mind. Proven by the way he looks at the child in question; there's a soft warmth to his gaze, not usually seen when out hunting Dragons. It's clear though he loved the kid, Hell, he loved all the kids he took care of like they were his own, 

"Hey Raph?" He soon speaks up, "Wanna hold 'em?" He offers, "It aint like they'll remeber bein' held by a giant Turtle if they en' up wakin' up, 'sides, maybe yer'll enjoy holdin' a lil' guy." 

 And then Casey, carefully, more carefully than anyone would think Casey is capable of being, held the child out to them, 

 "C'mon Raph, they aint gonna bite yer."

| Muse Interaction

Breaking around from the lair and sneaking out to get some god fun, well busting some skulls of the low lifes that used the night time to go about causing trouble. With a second thought given maybe certain gang members, sporting dragon tattoos were out and about as well. And well he was friends with a certain dragon hating puck head? Smile to Raph's beak and soon as he had the manhole cover placed back into place he was making headway to Casey's place. Sure they be up for another brawl with those purple dragons after all. Raphael got to Casey's place pretty easy he knew some short cuts here and there so it cut that travel pretty quick, not to mention the amount of times they 'offered' to walk Casey back home to avoid the guy staying over at their own. Eh Raph could get it Casey was like a bull in a China shop.

Making his way up the fire escapes once he got to the building they lived in didn't take long to reached Casey's place. And took even less time for Raph to figure his way in, not that it was hard. You think a guy going around taking the law into his own hands would be a bit better about keeping his own place secure ignoring the fact Raph and his brothers were trained in breaking in so easily to places. He can hear Casey let out a clear tried sigh once he gets the window opened up. Hmm seems Casey might be worn down? he still climbs on in and pauses when. Was Casey baby talking just now? Well now Raphael's interest and curiosity had piqued as he walked on in finding Casey fair quickly in their little place. Cradling something in their arms smirking a bit as he could see this giant of a man cradle a bundle in between his arms, clearly babbling to it. maybe cause the first time he met Casey they knock a baseball bat to him, but watching them being just so well soft? uh it was different.

"Uh so whatdya know big bad Casey Jones, is also fluent 'n motherese. Eh maybe better at it than English." Of course that was how Raph decided to make his presence known. Casey greeting Raph by hunching down suddenly as if the little bundled he was holding might set off somehow.

 "Ssh, keep it down would'ya? I jus' got the kid t' sleep." 

"Kid?" Raph asked but he did lower his voice, sure of course it made sense Casey wasn't just in his place baby talking to himself or worse his baseball bat. but the kid was still a bit of surprise Raph looking down at the bundle in Casey's arms, they seemed out still. Cute. Raph thought soon shifting his attention back to Casey as he crossed his arms over his plastron. "Uh I didn' know ya had a kid Casey." To be fair they didn't know one another all that much still but he kind of figured a dad would make mention of having a kid at some point right? Only for Casey to lightly chuckle a bit over Raph's remark. Leaving the turtle to slightly rise his brow at that confused on what he said would been seen as funny.

"What? Nah, Button's 'ere aint my kid,"

"buttons?" Raph asked there was no way that was the kids name right? but also it wasn't Casey then after all? "oh? whose is it?" Raph asks leaning over abit to get abetter look at the kid, yeah they didn't share any of Casey's traits he guesses. Then again neither did Raph and his brothers to Splinter so his thought can't be all that blamed.

"They're my neighbours from down the hall, I'm helpin' 'em out that's all,"

Course Casey was guy seemed pretty happy to offer a hand where ever he could.

"Kinda like how I help look after Angel, an' Ryan, an' the other kids on the block,"

Raphael offered a nod of his head to show he was listening but his attention was a bit more on the sight of this kid so comfortably sleeping in Casey's arms instead. Buttons seemed pretty content where they were comfortably nestled into Casey's hold. The kid despite all the talking was clearly sleeping peaceful, soft gentle resting breaths only given. Yeah seems like Casey has quite a lot of experience with kids adding truth to their statement.

"With Button's 'ere, I'm now Uncle Casey t' 'bout,"

Raph's eyes flicker up as Casey takes a moment to count, ready to tease them over being able to count up to whatever number they were going to say.

"Twenty kids - yeah, that soun's 'bout right." 

About to make his joke now but Raph's kind of thrown off from it when he sees the look in Casey deep blue eyes, as they look back down to buttons themself. Raph's never seen that look on them before, he seen that stare Splinter looked at each of his brothers and himself with that gaze. Casey loved this kid as if this kid was his own. Casey had it for a moment when mentioning Angel and Ryan and again at the number even. Raph let his joke die in his throat as he sort of just observed Casey for a moment. So used to that more fierce look to his eye, so could Raph be blamed for being maybe just a little interested in this more calming gaze they were holding. Letting the big guy have his moment, before he leaned in a bit more for a better look at the kid. Casey man be this clumsy human wrecking ball able to take a hit a give a better punch but he also had a clear gentle soul if this little tike was clearly so clam well sleeping in their arms like this. The sight alone was setting some weird warmth in his shell, slowly spreading out as he stole another glace at Casey once more. His heart felt like it was being squeezed suddenly. from how softly they were smiling at Buttons right now. The faintest twitch of his beak made his smile lopsided for a moment. A faint sigh escasped him as he just took it in and.

Shit.

Raph back away some now as he straightened up how he was standing "eh I better take off, got ya hands tied after-"

"Hey Raph?"

Raph lets them cut him off just now "uh yeah?"

"Wanna hold 'em?"

Raph took a step back as if Casey had asked him to hold a ticking bomb just now "what!" he exclaimed at least being smart enough to keep his tone low and soft when he did get the offer to hold them just now.

"It aint like they'll remeber bein' held by a giant Turtle if they en' up wakin' up, 'sides, maybe yer'll enjoy holdin' a lil' guy." 

Casey stated as if that was what Raphael was worried about just now, part of him was ready to bolt away but watching how gentle and carefully Casey was moving to hold them out towards Raphael had his stop in his tracks. He still hadn't taken them yet just Staring between Casey and Buttons in that moment.

"yeah but" Raph begins with ready to dismiss the offer altogether. Thing is he kind of did wanna hold them.

 "C'mon Raph, they aint gonna bite yer."

"I ain't scared of 'em bitin' me i'm scared of dropping them dimwit."

Raph pointed out no feeling like his had some point to prove as he huffed a haughty breath towards Casey. Looking back to Buttons he could only feel his nerves grow worse he didn't wanna drop them or suddenly make them cry if they woke up to find a giant green turtle holding them. But well he did wanna kind of hold the little thing, they seemed pretty deep in their sleep so it should be fine right? he could always hand it back to Casey after all. He lifted up his arms letting that self-conscious feeling fade for just a moment, as he slide his arms out under Casey's own so they can gently and slowly. Very Slowly hand the baby off to Raphael. He made this tiny body now in his arms his temporary nucleus. Cradling them in his arms, close so they wouldn't slip or rock about to much. Raph even his stance and the moment Casey's hand were pulled away he could feel the rest of the kid weight dip into his arms. A few thoughts ran through his head as he looked to the kid. Was he doing this right? was he too cold for them? but slowly all that worry went away as he found himself feeling clam.

Raph just smiled to himself a moment. The kid was pretty cute though, little chubby rosy cheeks. The tiny small button like nose, itty bitty hands. They were just so small. Yeah of course they were small they were a baby. Babies are small but also, Buttons was just so tiny it was so unfair, what right dose this little thing have being this tiny? Raph felt like his hear was being tugged at as he cradled them carefully the worry of dropping them still very much there in his mind. This little thing was so bizarre but also amazing? Watching them continue to sleep as if unaware of their new setting place. Suddenly there was a weird twinge in Raph's shell as he stood and looked over the baby so content in his own arms. He sort of buried it for now that wasn't a thought to care about. "Their so small." was all he did voice to Casey finally, a slight warm chuckle following as he got lost looking at the little bundle.

DOLPHIN MOMS DO 'BABY TALK' WITH THEIR CALVES

Baby talk or Motherese/ Parentese is a speech pattern nearly universal across cultures and languages in human caregivers interacting with children. It is characterized by a higher than usual pitch, exaggerated intonation, repetition, calling attention to objects and use of slow stretchy speeches. What we know about baby talking in other nonhuman species is sparse. Now, researchers have  found evidence for baby talk in bottlenose dolphin, a species that shows parallels to humans in their long-term mother–offspring bonds and lifelong vocal learning. 

Researchers analyzed audios from made wild bottlenose dolphins in waters near Sarasota Bay, Florida, United States, and found that females produced signature whistles with significantly higher maximum frequencies and wider frequency ranges when they were recorded with their own dependent calves.

This finding provide an example of convergent evolution of motherese in nonhuman mammals, and may help us understand how motherese can facilitate vocal learning and bonding in nonhumans as well as humans.

Photo by Carli Brush Stoll

Reference: Sayigh et al., 2023.  Bottlenose dolphin mothers modify signature whistles in the presence of their own calves. PNAS

motherese

Across human cultures and languages, adults talk to babies in a very particular way. They raise their pitch and broaden its range, while also shortening and repeating their utterances; the latter features occur even in sign language. Mothers use this exaggerated and musical style of speech (which is sometimes called “motherese”), but so do fathers, older children, and other caregivers. Infants prefer listening to it, which might help them bond with adults and learn language faster.

But to truly understand what baby talk is for, and how it evolved, we need to know which other animals use it, if any. The great apes don’t seem to vocally, but might use a gestural equivalent. Squirrel monkeys and rhesus macaques use special calls when talking to youngsters, but they’re very different from human baby talk, which is a modified version of normal speech. Zebra finches are closer to us: When singing in front of juveniles, adults add longer pauses between musical phrases and repeat introductory notes. Greater sac-winged bat mothers also change their pitch and timbre when signaling to pups, but again, it’s hard to tell if they’re using a distinct call or doing something analogous to baby talk. To make an inarguable case for the latter, you’d need to study a species that talks with both infants and older peers using the same standardized, identifiable call. In other words, you’d need a dolphin.

Every bottlenose dolphin produces its own unique signature whistle, which is the closest thing any animal has to a human name. Dolphins can recognize individuals through these whistles and will sometimes copy one another’s, perhaps as a form of address. They use their whistles frequently, to announce their position when separated from their pod, or as an introduction when meeting up with new groups. Calves develop their own signature whistles based on those they hear around them, and once learned, the whistles can go unchanged for at least 12 years.

Laela Sayigh, a zoologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has been studying the signature whistles of bottlenoses in Sarasota Bay, Florida, since 1986 as part of the world’s longest-running study of wild dolphins. She and her colleagues regularly catch these animals, check their health, and record their calls before releasing them. Sometimes, they catch mothers and calves together, and the animals exchange signature whistles throughout the process. By analysing 19 such moments, recorded over 34 years, Sayigh’s student Nicole El Haddad showed that mothers raised and widened the pitch of their signature whistles when calling to their calves, just as humans do when talking to their babies.

“We were just blown away by how consistent the effect was,” Sayigh told me. Between their intelligence and strong personality, dolphins behave unpredictably enough that scientists who study them are used to gleaning faint patterns amid messy data. But in this study, every mom changed its signature whistle around its calf in the same way. “The data are extraordinary and impressive,” Sabine Stoll, who studies language evolution at the University of Zurich, told me.

Dolphin baby talk isn’t exactly the same as ours—dolphin whistles don’t get more repetitive—but it’s certainly “the most convincing case of child-directed communication found in nonhuman animals to date,” Mirjam Knörnschild from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, who led the study on sac-winged bats, told me. And its existence in a species separated from us by more than 90 million years of history is likely a “stunning” example of convergent evolution, Stoll said.

If both species evolved baby talk independently, perhaps they did so for similar reasons. Human parents can better grab their infants’ attention through high-pitched baby talk than through normal speech, and dolphin mothers might do the same. Keeping her signature whistle but raising its pitch “would be a pretty foolproof way for the mom to say ‘This whistle is meant for you’ to the calf, and for the calf to know My mom is talking to me right now and no one else,” Sayigh said. That specificity would allow both of them to keep close contact in a raucous ocean where many dolphins might be sounding off at once.

Human baby talk is also thought to strengthen a baby’s bond with its caregivers, and to help it learn language by exaggerating important features of the spoken word. The same could well apply to dolphins, which also stay with their mother for a long time, and learn calls by listening to their peers. But testing these ideas would be incredibly hard without separating mothers and their calves—an experiment that Sayigh said would cross an ethical line. She showed that dolphin baby talk exists; its exact role “is just one of those things that might have to go unanswered,” she said.

Hey I just wanted to let you know that baby talk, also known as “motherese”, has been argued to have an evolutionary advantage. I think it would be worth looking into it, if you feel like it. There’s a reason we instinctively talk to babies a certain way, but some folks see it as a negative and tell you to talk to babies like you do with adults. Anyway, have a great rest of week!

ok

therapists (here using that to mean pt/ot/slp) using motherese with adult patients. what is up with that

How does your muse behave when they are on their own, with nobody watching?

I guess the main thing here is Yaz lets himself enjoy things a bit more? Like, he tries to resist cooing and fawning over cats when he's in public (ie: i headcanon he visits strays in limsa), but in private he definitely treats his cat like royalty and speaks to her in that high-pitch "motherese" voice.

Otherwise, Yaz makes a lot of odd noises? Speaks to himself, for sure.

Thank you for the ask!!

イヌの脳もmothereseに強く反応する

少し古いのですが、イヌが、baby talkもしくはmothereseと呼ばれる話し方に強く反応するという話題です。

ヒトの親が乳児に話しかける時には、通常より高く抑揚を強調した話し方をすることが多く、これはmathereseとかbaby talkと呼ばれます。

訓練されたイヌに様々な種類のヒトの声を聞かせ、脳の活動をfMRIで観察したところ、女性のmothereseに強く反応したということです。

内容も大変興味深いのですが、イヌを訓練して（恐らくはじっと動かないようにして）fMRIで観察できたというのが驚きですね。

The Social-Emotional Development of a Child at an Early Childcare Centre

Early learning centers provide a wide variety of activities to support children’s socialemotional development. These include interacting with others, regulating emotions, taking turns and learning about the world around them.

Design features for parents should convey welcome and warmth, with convenient places to leave and store items like strollers, car seats and coats. Visit other child care centers to learn about how they address these needs.

Social-Emotional Development

The social-emotional development of a child during preschool years is critical to their future success. It is when children learn who they are, understand their emotions and feelings, and develop a strong sense of self-regulation.

It is also when they begin to build relationships with their peers and adults. They learn to interact respectfully with others and take turns while learning and playing together.

Early childcare centre are designed to nurture a child’s social-emotional development through group interactions and play. This will give them the skills to be resilient and confident throughout their lives. These skills include interacting with others, understanding their own and other’s emotions, and taking turns. These skills will help them later on in life to form healthy relationships and be able to focus on their studies.

Visual and Creative Arts

For many children, art-making is a way of expressing themselves and making sense of their emotions. It also teaches them how to share resources and communicate with others in an effective manner.

Researchers have built upon Vygotsky’s theory that language acts as a tool to mediate thinking and found that visual representations of children’s ideas are more closely connected to their thoughts than verbal expressions. They also support children to transform their understandings through co-construction.

A good design will provide a space that is calming, inviting and encourages creative play. It should include spaces with natural materials and fibers that are durable and easy to clean, and child-sized furnishings. It should also have acoustics that address noise levels in a space that will be full of young children.

Language Development

A child’s spoken language development is crucially important for their cognitive advancement. Studies show that a child’s vocabulary in early childhood is a strong predictor of their academic achievement later in life.

Children begin to develop their language skills in the womb, using cries and

gestures. Once they’re born, they communicate through babbling and cooing and often respond to caregivers with “motherese”, a high-pitched sing-song voice that can stimulate early language development.

Children’s language development in a childcare centre is supported through playbased learning and interactions with other children. Teachers and educational assistants are also able to identify children with specific speech difficulties, implementing a programme that helps prevent them from falling behind academically. They also offer a range of other activities that help encourage language development, such as reading, storytelling and singing.

Physical Development

Child care centers immerse young children in group learning situations that help them develop emotional maturity, giving them the resilience and social intelligence to form healthy relationships. Studies show that these skills translate to better academic performance when they’re older.

Physical development includes children’s increased ability to control the muscles in their bodies as they explore and play. It also supports cognitive development as they use their bodies to learn about the world around them.

To promote physical development, it’s important for early learning centres to design the environment with this in mind. This involves providing enough square footage for classrooms, a variety of activities, and ample non-classroom spaces for staff to use for training, meetings and relaxation. It also means designing adult-height classroom work surfaces and sinks, a full range of storage solutions, and areas where teachers can comfortably take breaks away from children.

Nutrition

Early childcare education nutrition provides the foundation for healthy eating and active living that can last a lifetime. At Ware nursery children are offered a variety of nutritious meals that contain all the main food groups to help them grow big and strong, and learn how to make good choices for life.

EWPHCCS utilizes an environmental and policy change approach to improve nutrition, physical activity and screen-time in FCCHs. This includes local food purchasing through the Farm to Preschool program, implementing the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) guidelines for meal patterns and creating opportunities for outdoor play and Farm to ECE programs.

In addition, EWPHCCS uses an education and social and behavior change communication (SBCC) intervention for FCCHs. This includes written materials tailored to FCCH needs and interests, videos and peer support coaching using brief motivational interviewing.

tangentially, not be a shrill pedant, but i’m pretty sure linguists don’t like actually use the term “motherese” anymore. think there’s an effort to not make it about gender given the entire area of their social-linguistic studies

Latest research on autism springs renewed hope for autistic kids and parents alike!

Research on Autism Springs findings raise the expectations of early detection and prevention of autism and management of autistic kids. #neosciencehub #nsh #sciencehub #scifi #research #scientists #autism #springs #kids

As we commemorate the World Autism Day on 2nd April, 2023, there have been several momentous developments from research done on Autism, in the recent past. These findings raise the expectations of early detection and prevention of autism and management of autistic kids. The two significant outcomes are, response of toddlers to ‘motherese’ or baby talk and regular developmental screening. These…

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Attention to motherese speech is a promising early diagnostic marker for autism spectrum disorder

In a recent study published in JAMA Network Open, a team of researchers investigated the potential use of attention to motherese speech as a diagnostic character for autism spectrum disorder, and evaluated its association with social abilities and language skills. Study: Level of Attention to Motherese Speech as an Early Marker of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Image Credit:…

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Toddlers Who Lack Attention to Mother's Speech More Likely to Be Diagnosed with Autism

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Pierce Karen Pierce, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Neurosciences, UCSD Co-Director, Autism Center of Excellence, UCSD MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The mean age of ASD diagnosis and eventual treatment remains at ~52 months in the United States1 - years beyond the disorder’s prenatal origins2, and beyond the age when it can be reliably diagnosed in many cases3. Currently the only way to determine if a child has autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is to receive a developmental evaluation from an experienced clinician (usually a licensed clinical psychologist). There are often long waiting lists, and only a small number of clinicians have the experience required to make early-age (i.e., between 12-36 months) diagnoses of ASD. Thus, there are many places in the country as well as world wide wherein children wait months or years to receive a formal diagnosis due to a lack of available expertise. Moreover, diagnostic evaluations are expensive and usually cost the parent and/or insurance approximately ~$2,000 or more per evaluation.  Finally, clinical evaluations usually take between 2-3 hours to complete and result in fatigue for both the parent and toddler. Eye-tracking, which generates biologically-relevant, objective, and quantifiable metrics of both visual and auditory preference profiles in babies and toddlers in just minutes, is a technology that can dramatically change how ASD is diagnosed. MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?

Response:  A brief summary of the findings of our study is as follow: almost all of the toddlers who participated in an eye tracking study who showed low levels of attention to motherese speech received a diagnosis of autism from a clinical psychologist who was blind to their eye tracking results.  This is a notable finding because each eye tracking test can be completed in about a minute. A more detailed and comprehensive summary of our study is as follows:  653 toddlers aged 1 to 3 years old participated in an eye tracking study. Toddlers were presented with two videos on a screen: one of a woman speaking in motherese, and one non-human scene (either a busy highway or a movie of abstract shapes and numbers with accompanying electronic music). The videos were available for one minute, and the toddlers used their eyes to control which video played at a given time. If any given toddler looked at the actress speaking in motherese less than 30% of the time, the probability that they would receive a diagnosis of autism from a licensed clinical psychologist blind to their eye tracking score was 94%. Findings also showed that the toddlers that attended to motherese speech less than 30% of the time also had more challenges with speaking, cognition and social behavior, pointing to the importance of attending to human speech during early development. It is important to note that only about a third of children who received a diagnosis of autism ‘failed’ the motherese eye tracking test, highlighting that eye tracking can detect a special subtype of ASD.  In this case, the subtype are children who shy away from attending to speech. This is one of the only studies to use ‘gaze contingent’ eye tracking technology which allows the toddler to control what movie they saw, giving us great insight into what interests them. Finally, it is important to note that there were many toddlers who received a diagnosis of autism from a psychologist who ‘passed’ the motherese eye tracking test.  These toddlers tended to have better language and social behavior and highlights the fact that eye tracking can shed light on a both a toddlers strengths as well as their weaknesses and may be a particularly powerful tool for predicting a child’s clinical course.  MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report? There are 2 key take aways from this research: - If a toddler between 12-48 months doesn’t appear to pay attention to parents while they are speaking to him/her, this could be an early warning sign of autism and warrants a follow up with a qualified professional. - Autism can be accurately diagnosed in a subset of children using new eye tracking technology in just a few minutes. This finding helps us to re-think how autism is diagnosed, and opens up unprecedented opportunity to access diagnoses in remote areas where there are no clinicians available and to fast track participation in autism-relevant treatment.  MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a results of this study? Response: Future research should push the boundaries of what eye tracking technology can do to help children with autism and families. For example, scientists could possibly test whether or not treatment recommendations based on a child’s eye gaze profile accelerates gains in treatment faster than standard of care treatment. Disclosures: All of the research reported in the study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Pierce has a patent pending through the University of California, San Diego that incorporates the eye tracking tests. Dr. Pierce received a donation from the ACES Innovation Fund to examine new ways to leverage eye tracking technology that could benefit children and families. Citations: - Maenner MJ, Shaw KA, Bakian AV, et al. Prevalence and Characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 8 Years - Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States, 2018. MMWR Surveill Summ. Dec 3 2021;70(11):1-16. doi:10.15585/mmwr.ss7011a1 - Courchesne E, Gazestani VH, Lewis NE. Prenatal Origins of ASD: The When, What, and How of ASD Development. Trends in neurosciences. 2020;43(5):326-342. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2020.03.005 - Pierce K, Gazestani VH, Bacon E, et al. Evaluation of the Diagnostic Stability of the Early Autism Spectrum Disorder Phenotype in the General Population Starting at 12 Months. JAMA Pediatr. Jun 1 2019;173(6):578-587. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.0624 - Pierce K, Wen TH, Zahiri J, et al. Level of Attention to Motherese Speech as an Early Marker of Autism Spectrum Disorder. JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(2):e2255125. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.55125 The information on MedicalResearch.com is provided for educational purposes only, and is in no way intended to diagnose, cure, or treat any medical or other condition. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health and ask your doctor any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. In addition to all other limitations and disclaimers in this agreement, service provider and its third party providers disclaim any liability or loss in connection with the content provided on this website.     Read the full article