In infant research, various auditory/visual events are often used as attention getters to orient infants to a screen and alert them to upcoming information for their detection, discrimination, and/or recognition. Importantly, the influence of attention-getters on infants’ performance has rarely been systematically evaluated, even though these attention cues could be affecting subsequent information processing. This study investigated whether specific attention-getters could prime infants’ preferences for infant-directed speech (IDS) compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). Both a non-social and a social prime were chosen with the prediction that the social prime would strengthen infants' attention to IDS on a subsequent trial, but the non-social prime would have no differential effect on subsequent attention to either speech type. A total of 20 12- to 18-month old infants were presented with either a nonsocial (rotating form + chimes) or social (smiling female + voice) prime in an infant-controlled, speech preference procedure with both IDS and ADS speech types. Given previous research, we predicted that infants would show significantly more attention on trials during which looking produced IDS, but that this preference would be significantly augmented for infants in the condition receiving a social attention-getter before each trial. Results did not bear out this prediction, although we found a consistent, robust preference for IDS. The results will be discussed in terms of why these attention getters did not affect subsequent processing of two very different speech types, and what future modifications may be necessary in order to examine roles of attention getters in affecting experimental outcomes in infancy research. A secondary benefit of the findings is that we empirically established a growing preference for IDS in infants as old as 18-months of age.

在婴儿研究中，各种听觉/视觉事件通常被用作吸引者，将婴儿定向到屏幕上并提醒他们即将出现的信息，以进行检测，辨别和/或识别。重要的是，尽管这些注意力提示可能会影响后续的信息处理，但很少有系统地评估注意力吸引者对婴儿表现的影响。这项研究调查了与成人定向语音（ADS）相比，特定的注意力吸引者是否可以引发婴儿对婴儿定向语音（IDS）的偏爱。选择了非社交素养和社交素养，并预测社交素养会在随后的试验中增强婴儿对IDS的关注，但非社交素养不会对随后对两种语言类型的关注产生差异。共有20名12至18个月大的婴儿在IDS和ADS语音类型的婴儿控制的语音偏好程序中出现了非社交（旋转形式+响铃）或社交（微笑女性+语音）素数。根据先前的研究，我们预测婴儿会在看起来像IDS的试验中表现出更多的关注，但是对于在每次试验前都得到社会关注的情况下的婴儿，这种偏好会大大增加。尽管我们发现IDS具有一致，可靠的偏好，但结果并不能证明这一预测。我们将针对这些注意力吸引者为何不影响两种截然不同的语音类型的后续处理的原因来讨论结果，以及将来可能需要进行哪些修改，以检查注意力获得者在婴儿研究中影响实验结果的作用。该发现的第二个好处是，根据经验，我们对18个月大的婴儿建立了对IDS的越来越多的偏好。