Preterm and full term infant vocalization and the origin of language.

Clicks: 358
ID: 61909
2019
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #207 of 1,628 articles by views in Scientific reports

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 1,628 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Abstract
How did vocal language originate? Before trying to determine how referential vocabulary or syntax may have arisen, it is critical to explain how ancient hominins began to produce vocalization flexibly, without binding to emotions or functions. A crucial factor in the vocal communicative split of hominins from the ape background may thus have been copious, functionally flexible vocalization, starting in infancy and continuing throughout life, long before there were more advanced linguistic features such as referential vocabulary. 2-3 month-old modern human infants produce "protophones", including at least three types of functionally flexible non-cry precursors to speech rarely reported in other ape infants. But how early in life do protophones actually appear? We report that the most common protophone types emerge abundantly as early as vocalization can be observed in infancy, in preterm infants still in neonatal intensive care. Contrary to the expectation that cries are the predominant vocalizations of infancy, our all-day recordings showed that protophones occurred far more frequently than cries in both preterm and full-term infants. Protophones were not limited to interactive circumstances, but also occurred at high rates when infants were alone, indicating an endogenous inclination to vocalize exploratorily, perhaps the most fundamental capacity underlying vocal language.
Reference Key
oller2019pretermscientific Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Oller, D Kimbrough;Caskey, Melinda;Yoo, Hyunjoo;Bene, Edina R;Jhang, Yuna;Lee, Chia-Cheng;Bowman, Dale D;Long, Helen L;Buder, Eugene H;Vohr, Betty;
Journal Scientific reports
Year 2019
DOI
10.1038/s41598-019-51352-0
URL
Keywords

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.