Speech And Song Response Essay

Speech and song are both prevalent and important parts of infants lives yet the question of whether infants could in fact differentiate between speech and song and if they prefer one over the other had not been widely studied. Tsang, Falk, and Hessel, (2016) looked specifically at whether infants aged between six and ten months from English-speaking households can differentiate between native Russian speaking and native English speaking mothers speaking or singing. This was done by using five English and Russian song samples and six speech samples with each being repeated five times. Infants were either assigned to the Russian or English language condition and listened to the speech or song until they lost interest and turned their attention …show more content…
Some infants may have been more exposed to song than others from having their mothers sing to them often and may have then been spoken to in a more adult like manner rather than being exposed to infant directed speech which is common when speaking to infants. This difference could help some infants who are used to being spoken to and sung to differentiate between song and speech because they have been more exposed to song and can tell the difference between the two. Related to this infants who are more exposed to adult directed speech at home rather than being spoken to in infant directed speech may also struggle to tell the difference. These differences in the home should be accounted for when researching speech and song preference as it could create a significant difference between the infants who are spoken to in infant directed speech and those who are not as well as those who are often sung to (Tsang, Falk, & Hessel,