How Does Social Feedback Affect Vocal Development?

Many researchers have noticed a similarity in the way birds develop songs and the way infants acquire language. Michael Goldstein had a particular interest in examining how social influences in birds relate to humans. The purpose of the Goldstein study was to determine how social feedback impacts vocal development in infants. Specifically, Goldstein wanted to know if the timing of a caregiver’s response to their infant’s vocalization influences the infant’s vocal behavior (Goldstein, 2003). Goldstein studied 30 infants that had an average age of eight years old. The study consisted of two 30-minute observation sessions in which caregivers interacted with their infants. The first session allowed the participants to get acquainted to the room the experiment took place it. The two groups observed were a contingent experimental group and a yoked control group. For the first 10 minutes of the second session, both groups’ mothers interacted normally with their infants. The experimenters recorded infants’ vocalizations and how the mothers responded so a …show more content…
The infants of the contingent group, the group whose mothers responded directly after they vocalized, increased not only their number of vocalizations but also the quality of their sounds. Their sounds were more advanced and they had a higher rate of syllable production. The infants in the yoked group, the group whose mothers were instructed to wait a short period of time before positively reinforcing their infants, did not increase the quality of their sounds. They did, however, increase the number of responses in the extinction period because the responsiveness of their mothers was so much greater during the last 10 minutes than when their interactions were strictly scheduled (Goldstein, 2003). All of these results carry great significance when applied to mechanisms of speech