Towards understanding the origin of infant directed speech: A vocal robot with infant-like articulation

Abstract

Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) is the non-standard form of caregivers' speech to their infants. Developmental studies indicate that IDS changes from infant-directed to adult-directed depending on infant's age and/or linguistic level. However, it is still unclear what features in infants cause IDS. This article introduces a vocal robot with an infant-like articulatory system to attack the issue by means of a constructive approach. A preliminary experiment implies that our robot can vocalize structurally similar to infant articulation although it is mechanically rather different.