AIRS 4th Annual Meeting: 2012

Title: Does an Icelandic Woman Know When a Japanese Toddler Sings?
Authors: Mayumi Adachi (Hokkaido University),

Helga Rut Gudmundsdóttir (University of

Iceland)

Abstract

Adachi and Ando (2010) demonstrate that Japanese mothers can interpret a Japanese toddler’s
linguistically ambiguous vocalizations as either talking or singing, depending on the context
sampled. Similar interpretations have been confirmed with Japanese fathers (Adachi & Ding,
2011), Japanese college students (Adachi, 2010, 2011), Chinese college students (Ding & Adachi,
2011), and German mothers (Adachi & Falk, 2012). In the present study, we further explore this
phenomenon with young Icelandic women, mothers and non-mothers. Twenty-one Icelandic
women listened to the same 50 vocalizations used in the earlier studies and evaluated whether
each vocalization sounded as talking or singing. Overall results indicated that Icelandic women
interpreted the Japanese toddler’s vocalizations taken from infant-directed speech contexts
more as though it were talking than as singing and those taken from infant-directed song
contexts more as singing than as talking. We will report the vocal cues used by Icelandic
women to differentiate two types of vocalizations in our presentation.