TY - JOUR
T1 - “Motherese” Prosody in Fetal-Directed Speech
T2 - An Exploratory Study Using Automatic Social Signal Processing
AU - Parlato-Oliveira, Erika
AU - Saint-Georges, Catherine
AU - Cohen, David
AU - Pellerin, Hugues
AU - Pereira, Isabella Marques
AU - Fouillet, Catherine
AU - Chetouani, Mohamed
AU - Dommergues, Marc
AU - Viaux-Savelon, Sylvie
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding. This study was supported by the CAPES fund of Ministry of Education of Brazil and the Centre d'Activité et de Recherche en Psychiatrie Infanto-Juvénile (CARPIJ).
Funding Information:
This study was supported by the CAPES fund of Ministry of Education of Brazil and the Centre d’Activité et de Recherche en Psychiatrie Infanto-Juvénile (CARPIJ).
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2021 Parlato-Oliveira, Saint-Georges, Cohen, Pellerin, Pereira, Fouillet, Chetouani, Dommergues and Viaux-Savelon.
PY - 2021/3/9
Y1 - 2021/3/9
N2 - Introduction: Motherese, or emotional infant directed speech (IDS), is the specific form of speech used by parents to address their infants. The prosody of IDS has affective properties, expresses caregiver involvement, is a marker of caregiver-infant interaction quality. IDS prosodic characteristics can be detected with automatic analysis. We aimed to explore whether pregnant women “speak” to their unborn baby, whether they use motherese while speaking and whether anxio-depressive or obstetrical status impacts speaking to the fetus. Participants and Methods: We conducted an observational study of pregnant women with gestational ages from 26 to 38 weeks. Women were recruited in a university hospital department of obstetrics. Thirty-five women agreed to participate in the study, and 26 audio records were exploitable. We collected obstetrical and sociodemographic data, pregnancy outcomes, anxiety and depressive status using the Covy and Raskin Scales, and life events using the Sensations During Pregnancy and Life Event Questionnaire. Each participant was left alone with an audio recorder with a recommendation to feel free to speak to her fetus as she would have done at home. The recording was stopped after 3 min. Audio recordings were analyzed by two methods: psycholinguist experts' annotation and computational objective automatic analyses. Results: Most mothers (89%) reported speaking to their fetuses. We found a correlation between maternal first perceptions of fetal movements and the start of mother's speaking to fetus. Motherese prosody was detected with both annotation and automatic analysis with a significant correlation between the two methods. In this exploratory study, motherese use was not associated with maternal anxiodepressive or obstetrical status. However, the more future mothers were depressed, the less they spoke with their fetuses during the recording. Conclusion: Fetal directed speech (FDS) can be detected during pregnancy, and it contains a period of prosody that shares the same characteristics of motherese that can be described as prenatal motherese or emotional fetal-directed speech (e-FDS). This means that pregnant women start using motherese much earlier than expected. FDS seems to be correlated with maternal first perceptions of fetal movements and depression scores. However, more research is needed to confirm these exploratory results.
AB - Introduction: Motherese, or emotional infant directed speech (IDS), is the specific form of speech used by parents to address their infants. The prosody of IDS has affective properties, expresses caregiver involvement, is a marker of caregiver-infant interaction quality. IDS prosodic characteristics can be detected with automatic analysis. We aimed to explore whether pregnant women “speak” to their unborn baby, whether they use motherese while speaking and whether anxio-depressive or obstetrical status impacts speaking to the fetus. Participants and Methods: We conducted an observational study of pregnant women with gestational ages from 26 to 38 weeks. Women were recruited in a university hospital department of obstetrics. Thirty-five women agreed to participate in the study, and 26 audio records were exploitable. We collected obstetrical and sociodemographic data, pregnancy outcomes, anxiety and depressive status using the Covy and Raskin Scales, and life events using the Sensations During Pregnancy and Life Event Questionnaire. Each participant was left alone with an audio recorder with a recommendation to feel free to speak to her fetus as she would have done at home. The recording was stopped after 3 min. Audio recordings were analyzed by two methods: psycholinguist experts' annotation and computational objective automatic analyses. Results: Most mothers (89%) reported speaking to their fetuses. We found a correlation between maternal first perceptions of fetal movements and the start of mother's speaking to fetus. Motherese prosody was detected with both annotation and automatic analysis with a significant correlation between the two methods. In this exploratory study, motherese use was not associated with maternal anxiodepressive or obstetrical status. However, the more future mothers were depressed, the less they spoke with their fetuses during the recording. Conclusion: Fetal directed speech (FDS) can be detected during pregnancy, and it contains a period of prosody that shares the same characteristics of motherese that can be described as prenatal motherese or emotional fetal-directed speech (e-FDS). This means that pregnant women start using motherese much earlier than expected. FDS seems to be correlated with maternal first perceptions of fetal movements and depression scores. However, more research is needed to confirm these exploratory results.
KW - fetal-directed speech
KW - machine learning
KW - mother-fetus interaction
KW - motherese
KW - prenatal
KW - social signal processing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85102926260&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.646170
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.646170
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85102926260
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 12
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
JF - Frontiers in Psychology
M1 - 646170
ER -