Sound to Meaning: How infants learn to use prosody to communicate
Sound to Meaning focuses on how infants learn to use the melody of their voice (you can also think of the word intonation) to communicate with their caregivers during the period where they are not yet able to do so by using words and sentences. Infants can change their intonation patterns to communicate different messages to their caregivers.
Using intonation they can communicate:
- Comfort
- Discomfort
- Need for attention
- And many other!
How infants learn to associate intonation patterns with communicative meanings (called prosodic form-meaning mappings) is not yet clear. This ability is important because it allows infants to successfully communicate with their caregivers, and to develop their speech and language skills. We therefore ask: