Strategy Spotlight: Motherese/Parentese

Motherese is the singsong voice that parents naturally use when speaking to very young babies. (Fickenscher, S., & Gaffney, E. (2016). Auditory verbal strategies to build listening and spoken language skills. Retrieved from http://www.auditory-verbal-mentoring.com/contact/contact.php) *can also be retrieved from this website using the navigation at the top of the page*

Motherese can also be described as parentese, baby talk, or child directed speech. It doesn’t have to be done by a mother or only an adult even! Older siblings also natural engage with babies and younger children using this change in tone and prosody. They seem to intuitively understand from an adult’s model that language needs to be simplified when speaking to babies and young children.

When using child directed speech, we often use shorter sentences, repetition, and a slower rate of speech. We raise the pitch of our voices, sometimes an entire octave higher. Babies LOVE this sound. They respond in their body movement and facial expressions, matching their movements with the intonation of the speaker (Gopnik, Meltzoff, Kuhl 1999). The exaggerated intonation becomes what we often describe as “sing song” because we vary our suprasegmentals of speech (duration, pitch, and intensity).

What does the use of Motherese look like for a child who is deaf or hard of hearing? Some research describes that parents of children who are DHH use less Motherese than parents of children who are hearing. Children who are DHH can receive less auditory experience and less richness of language in early infant and childhood when this is the case.

>HOWEVER< it is important to know, that one of the aspects of motherese is the elongation of vowel sounds within words.

“Hiiiiiii babyyyyyy, look at youuuuuu! You are soooooooo big! Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle baaaabyyyy!”

Vowel sounds carry the majority of acoustic energy in speech and they are typically the most audible sounds for children who are amplified. Regardless of the child’s access, Motherese should be encouraged for every child, even until (if not beyond) their first birthday when Motherese typically declines.

So if we are trying to create more opportunities for Motherese, where do we start?

• repetitive books with rich intonation (sing song rhythm) such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle

• nursery rhymes

• traditional songs

What else can you think of that would help increase the use of Motherese?