These results are presented in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in an article entitled “Social interaction shapes babbling: Testing parallels between birdsong and speech.” “This is the first time for research showing that babies change how they vocalize in response to social responses — not sounds, but sights — by using more mature sounds,” West said. “This shows that parent behavior plays a role very early in the process of babies learning to talk, a role that goes beyond simply talking to the infant.”

“This research takes advantage of infants’ sociality to understand development as it is constructed by interactions with caregivers,” doctoral student Michael Goldstein said, “and it shows that social learning is a crucial part of vocal development.” His doctoral thesis work forms the bulk of the research and was supervised by West. Also collaborating on the article was Andrew King, an ornothologist and senior scientist at Indiana University.

Dr. Alan Slater, a reader in psychology at Exeter University, backed the findings. “If you had infants who were not given any encouragement when they are speaking, then their language development would be delayed.” He said providing infants with feedback is the best way to ensure they learn to speak when they are supposed to. “The best advice is to provide infants with a lot of verbal feedback and to talk to children in a manner that is called infant directive speech. You should not talk to them about the state of Iraq, for instance, but rather about what is happening in the here and now, for instance when parents are taking off their clothes.”

The researchers write in the abstract of the journal article: “This data provides strong support for a parallel in function between vocal precursors of songbirds and infants. Because imitation is usually considered the mechanism for vocal learning in both situations, the findings introduce social shaping as a general process underlying the development of speech and song.”