Infant vocal production has been studied mainly from the perspective of language development. We studied it from the perspective of singing development by analyzing a 15-month-old’s imitations of songs. The infant wore a recording device that yielded a continuous, 16-hr audio recording of all the sounds produced by him and around him throughout the day. We listened to the audio file and identified instances in which his unprompted vocalizations resembled songs he had heard earlier. One imitation was recognized by his father, who then sang the song himself and engaged in imitative turn taking with the infant; the other imitation went unnoticed by his parents. Perceptual and acoustic analyses of the imitations and the song models showed that the infant imitated critical music features of the songs, including pitches, intervals, and rhythms. We discuss the use of new technologies for the study of singing development in infancy; such technologies facilitate the collection of spontaneous vocalizations that may go unnoticed by parents and make it possible to trace connections between music environment opportunities and specific singing outcomes in infants.

中文翻译：

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婴儿声乐模仿

婴儿发声的研究主要是从语言发展的角度进行的。我们通过分析15个月大的歌曲模仿，从歌唱发展的角度来研究它。婴儿佩戴了一个录音设备，该设备可以对他和他周围一整天产生的所有声音进行连续 16 小时的录音。我们听了音频文件并确定了他的自发发声与他之前听过的歌曲相似的情况。一个模仿被他的父亲认出来，然后他自己唱了这首歌，并与婴儿进行了模仿轮换；另一个模仿没有被他的父母注意到。对模仿物和歌曲模型的感知和声学分析表明，婴儿模仿了歌曲的关键音乐特征，包括音高、音程和节奏。我们讨论了新技术在婴儿歌唱发展研究中的应用；此类技术有助于收集父母可能不会注意到的自发发声，并使追踪音乐环境机会与婴儿特定歌唱结果之间的联系成为可能。