When adults speak or sing with infants, they sound differently than in adult communication. Infant‐directed (ID) communication helps caregivers to regulate infants' emotions and helps infants to process speech information, at least from ID‐speech. However, it is largely unclear whether infants might also process speech information presented in ID‐singing. Therefore, we examined whether infants discriminate vowels in ID‐singing, as well as potential differences with ID‐speech. Using an alternating trial preference procedure, infants aged 4–6 and 8–10 months were tested on their discrimination of an unfamiliar non‐native vowel contrast presented in ID‐like speech and singing. Relying on models of early speech sound perception, we expected that infants in their first half year of life would discriminate the vowels, in contrast to older infants whose non‐native sound perception should deteriorate, at least in ID‐like speech. Our results showed that infants of both age groups were able to discriminate the vowels in ID‐like singing, while only the younger group discriminated the vowels in ID‐like speech. These results show that infants process speech sound information in song from early on. They also hint at diverging perceptual or attentional mechanisms guiding infants' sound processing in ID‐speech versus ID‐singing toward the end of the first year of life.

中文翻译：

---

为我唱歌，妈妈！婴幼儿对歌曲新元音的辨别

当成人与婴儿说话或唱歌时，他们的声音与成人交流时不同。婴儿导向 (ID) 交流有助于照顾者调节婴儿的情绪，并帮助婴儿处理语音信息，至少从 ID-语音。然而，目前还不清楚婴儿是否也能处理 ID- singing 中呈现的语音信息。. 因此，我们检查了婴儿是否在 ID 唱歌中区分元音，以及与 ID 语音的潜在差异。使用交替试验偏好程序，测试了 4-6 个月和 8-10 个月大的婴儿对类似 ID 的语音和歌唱中出现的陌生非母语元音对比的辨别能力。依赖于早期语音声音感知模型，我们预计出生前半年的婴儿会区分元音，而年龄较大的婴儿的非母语声音感知会恶化，至少在类似 ID 的语音中。我们的结果表明，两个年龄组的婴儿都能够在类 ID 的歌唱中区分元音，而只有年轻组的婴儿在类 ID 的语音中能够区分元音。这些结果表明，婴儿很早就开始处理歌曲中的语音信息。