Infant Recognition of Mother's Voice

Perception ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 491-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Mehler ◽  
Josiane Bertoncini ◽  
Michele Barriere ◽  
Dora Jassik-Gerschenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Young Infant ◽  
Nonnutritive Sucking ◽  
Mother’S Voice ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Normal Speech

Each of a group of one-month-old infants was reinforced, contingent upon nonnutritive sucking, with its mother's voice and the voice of a stranger. In this experiment, two conditions were applied. Under the first, the mother's speech was aimed at communicating with the infant, while, under the second, the mother's speech lacked prosodic and intonational aspects of normal speech. It was shown that infants will suck more for their mother's voices under the intonated condition only. It was concluded that a young infant prefers its own mother's voice provided the mother speaks normally.

Through the mother’s voice: Exposure and intimacy in Lesley McIntyre’s photo project The Time of Her Life and Elisabeth Zahnd Legnazzi’s Chiara A Journey Into Light

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 461-475
Author(s):  
Agnese Sile
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Collaborative Practice ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Ethical Philosophy ◽  
Photographic Essay ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mother’S Voice ◽  
The Voice

When it comes to depicting ill or disabled children, the ethics of representation becomes increasingly complex. The perception of photographs as voyeuristic and objectifying is of particular concern here and resonates with widespread fear about the eroticisation, mistreatment and exploitation of children. Although these fears are reasonable, this view does not take into account the voice and agenda of the photographic subject, disregards the possibility of recognition and the participatory nature of photography. In this article, I focus on photography as a collaborative practice. I analyse two photographic projects by photographers/mothers that document their ill and dying daughters – Lesley McIntyre’s photographic essay The Time of Her Life (2004) and Elisabeth Zahnd Legnazzi’s Chiara A Journey Into Light (2009). Illness in these projects is not experienced in isolation. Instead, the photographs and accompanying texts provide a space to engage in a dialogue which is built on the interdependency of all the participants of the photographic act – the photographer, the subject of the photograph and the viewer. My aim is to question how these projects construct experiences and articulate private expressions of illness and how the photographs enhance and/or challenge the mother–daughter bond. Alan Radley’s critical analysis of representations of illness, Emmanuel Lévinas’s and Maurice Blanchot’s perspectives on ethical philosophy and visual social semiotics approach developed by Kress and Van Leeuwen provide a guiding framework for this study.

Visual Recognition of Mother by Young Infants: Facilitation by Speech

Perception ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 1133-1153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Burnham
Keyword(s):  
Visual Recognition ◽  
Visual Fixation ◽  
Facial Cues ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Fixation Preference ◽  
Mother’S Voice ◽  
Speech Information ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Relative Salience

Infants recognise their mother's voice at birth but appear not to recognise visual-only presentations of her face until around 3 months. In a series of experiments visual discrimination by infants aged 1, 3, and 5 months of their mother's and a female stranger's face was investigated in visual-only and visual-plus-speech conditions. In the first experiment these infants' discrimination of mother's and female stranger's faces was measured by their visual-fixation-preference scores. Discrimination was found to be facilitated by the addition of speech information. In experiment 2 naive adults viewed silent videotapes of infants from experiment 1 and judged whether the mother had been presented on the infants' left or right. This added further information to the fixation-preference results of experiment 1: it was found that 1-month-olds discriminate mother's and stranger's face only in the presence of speech information, whereas 3-month-olds also do so in visual-only conditions. In experiments 3 and 4 the relative salience of lip movements and voice information in visual recognition of mother's face was investigated. In experiment 3, no significant differences in infants' visual-fixation-preference scores were obtained. However, in experiment 4 adults' ‘where is mother?’ judgments of videotapes from experiment 3 were found to be more accurate in the voice than in the lip-movements conditions, especially for the 3-month-olds and more accurate when mother rather than stranger was talking. It is concluded that young infants' visual recognition of mother is facilitated by addition of speech information, that it is primarily the voice component of speech that causes this facilitation, and that social discrimination is best indexed by a dependent variable which is sensitive to a range of facial cues provided by infants.

scholarly journals Acoustic analysis of tracheo-oesophageal voice in male total laryngectomy patients

2011 ◽  
Vol 93 (7) ◽  
pp. 523-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
N Deore ◽  
S Datta ◽  
RC Dwivedi ◽  
R Palav ◽  
R Shah ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Total Laryngectomy ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Normal Subjects ◽  
Maximum Phonation Time ◽  
Alaryngeal Speech ◽  
Prosthetic Valves ◽  
Single Voice ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Normal Speech ◽  
Normal Controls

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to test the null hypothesis that voice parameters of post-laryngectomy patients using tracheo-oesophageal (TO) prosthetic valves are similar to those of normal laryngeal subjects. METHODS Thirty total laryngectomy patients and thirty normal controls were subjected to acoustic analysis of single voice recordings using a sustained vowel. Acoustic parameters including fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio and maximum phonation time were analysed. RESULTS Poorer values were found as well as larger variability for all the voice parameters for the total laryngectomy patients using TO voice compared with those of normal subjects. There were statistically significant differences (p<0.05) for all studied parameters between the TO and normal speech. CONCLUSIONS Alaryngeal speech with TO voice prosthesis is not yet comparable to laryngeal speech.

HONC Measures in Men and Women: Validity and Variability

1995 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan E. Sussman
Keyword(s):  
Calibration Procedure ◽  
Correction Factors ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Single Measurement ◽  
Coupling Index ◽  
Measurement Session ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Normal Speech ◽  
Nasal Resonance ◽  
Over Time

Horii's (1980) Oral Nasal Coupling index (HONC) was used in measures of 20 women and 20 men with normal speech to validate procedures used for assessment of disordered nasal resonance. Subjects produced sustained vowels [l] and [a], repeated single word productions of “baby” and “mamie,” and nonnasal and nasal sentences. Results showed that the correction factors generated during [m] calibration procedures differed significantly between women and men, but not over time within the single measurement session. Differences were also found for the decibel levels produced in the voice channel during the [m] calibration procedure: the women used higher dB levels, particularly towards the end of the session, than the men. In addition, dB levels differed over time. Differences of 13 dB (HONC) were found to separate nonnasal from nasal sentences supporting the validity of the HONC measure. Smaller differences were found between sustained vowel and repeated single words and nasal sentences. Greater variability found for vowel productions also suggests that the sentence stimuli may be more effective for demonstrating hyper- or hyponasality.

The Acoustics of Different Genres of Singing

2014 ◽  
pp. 166-188
Author(s):  
Johan Sundberg
Keyword(s):  
Formant Frequencies ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Normal Speech

This chapter reviews several studies of singing in different styles. The studies reveal that the differences concern all the main dimensions of phonation: pitch, loudness, phonation type, and formant frequencies. Most vocal styles differ substantially from normal speech, though in quite different ways. A difficulty in describing the characteristics of the styles of singing, which are typical of different musical genres, is that the same term does not always mean the same to all experts. Some diverging results in voice research on styles of singing emerge from such terminological issues. The author suggests that descriptions of different styles of singing should be related to objective findings on the overall phonatory and articulatory potentials of the voice.

Voice Analysis of Patients with Endoscopically Treated Early Laryngeal Carcinoma

1992 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Frederick McGuirt ◽  
James A. Koufman ◽  
David Blalock ◽  
Robert S. Feehs
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Cord ◽  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Laryngeal Carcinoma ◽  
Airway Resistance ◽  
Voice Analysis ◽  
Laser Resection ◽  
Endoscopic Laser ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Normal Speech ◽  
Laryngeal Airway

Endoscopic laser resection of early (T1) laryngeal carcinoma has been advocated as an alternative to radiotherapy. Heretofore, the voice characteristics following this procedure have been addressed in only one review, which included patients treated by irradiation and laser resection. We present the first review of voice findings in 22 patients treated only by endoscopic laser resection of their vocal cord carcinomas. Laser resection of selected vocal cord carcinomas produced voice function results acceptable to the patients and was rated by them to be normal to almost normal. Speech pathologists rated the voices to be near-normal to mildly abnormal. Voices after laser resection of vocal carcinoma exhibited a slightly higher fundamental frequency, a decrease in intensity and phonatory duration, and markedly higher laryngeal airway resistance. The percentage of voicing showed little deviation from normal, as did mean percentage of perturbations.

scholarly journals Of human bonding: newborns prefer their mothers' voices

Science ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 208 (4448) ◽  
pp. 1174-1176 ◽  
Author(s):  
AJ DeCasper ◽  
WP Fifer
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Maternal Voice ◽  
Mother’S Voice ◽  
The Voice

By sucking on a nonnutritive nipple in different ways, a newborn human could produce either its mother's voice or the voice of another female. Infants learned how to produce the mother's voice and produced it more often than the other voice. The neonate's preference for the maternal voice suggests that the period shortly after birth may be important for initiating infant bonding to the mother.

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