The role of context in infant preference for father's voice

The present study was designed to investigate whether infants prefer their fathers’ voices over an unfamiliar male voice within the context of normal father-infant interaction, i.e., infant-directed (ID) speech. Twenty Caucasian male and female four-month-olds were tested in a visual-fixation preference procedure. Attentional preference was measured by the amount of time the infants watched a visual stimulus. It was found that infants did not show greater attentional or affective responsiveness to paternal ID over unfamiliar male ID speech samples. However, mothers and fathers appear to be very similar in their perception of father-infant interaction. According to these results, four-month-olds do not prefer their fathers’ voices to that of an unfamiliar male. This finding contrast sharply with the literature on maternal voice preference. The data was interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that multimodal stimulus cues are necessary for paternal voice recognition in infancy.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Department dc:contributor.department

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

1995

Author dc:creator

• Ward, Cynthia D.

• infant perception
• father-child relations
• infant-directed speech

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

etd-03042009-040816

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/41413