Robin Panneton Cooper

Two-day-olds prefer their native language

Newborn infants whose mothers were monolingual speakers of Spanish or English were tested with audio recordings of female strangers speaking either Spanish or English. Infant sucking controlled the presentation of auditory stimuli. Infants activated recordings of their native language for longer periods than the foreign language.

The development of infants' preference for motherese

Generally, infants prefer infant-directed (ID) to adult-directed (AD) speech. Mostly, researchers have used unfamiliar female voices in these studies. We investigated preferences for maternal ID speech in 1- and 4-month-olds. Using a procedure in which infants controlled access to voices by fixating a visual display, infants listened to recordings of natural female ID and AD speech. In Experiment 1, 1-month-olds heard recordings of maternal ID and AD speech, but these infants showed no preference for maternal ID speech. In Experiment 2, 1-month-olds heard the same ID and AD speech tapes but were not familiar with the speakers. Contrary to Experiment 1, these infants preferred ID speech. In Experiment 3, 4-month-olds heard recordings of maternal ID and AD speech and showed a significant preference for ID speech. Collectively, these results suggest that infant attention to ID speech depends on both speaker-general and speaker-specific characteristics, with interesting developmental changes occuring during early infancy.

Height and Occupational Success: A Review and Critique

The relationship between height and occupational success is reviewed. Examining the focal areas of academia, police work, and sales, the review concludes that height is an important attribute in securing a position but that it has little effect on job performance. These findings are limited to men at the present time. Suggestions ate offered for further research.