We know that babies prefer the high-pitched sounds produced by their caregivers in “baby talk” over regular speech, but a new study provides an exciting new perspective. At five months of age, it seems that babies prefer to listen to the sounds of their peers to the cooing of their mother.
Researchers at the University of Quebec tested babies on their preference for different speakers by using a specialized speech synthesizer. They were able to simulate the effects of the human vocal tract—the vocal cords, tongue and mouth—to create vowels with differing pitch and resonance, representing vowels produced by vocal tracts of different sizes.
