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. 2024 Apr 3:8:439-461.
doi: 10.1162/opmi_a_00134. eCollection 2024.

Evidence for Infant-directed Speech Preference Is Consistent Across Large-scale, Multi-site Replication and Meta-analysis

Martin Zettersten  1 , Christopher Cox  2 , Christina Bergmann  3 , Angeline Sin Mei Tsui  4 , Melanie Soderstrom  5 , Julien Mayor  6 , Rebecca A Lundwall  7 , Molly Lewis  8 , Jessica E Kosie  1 , Natalia Kartushina  6 , Riccardo Fusaroli  2 , Michael C Frank  4 , Krista Byers-Heinlein  9 , Alexis K Black  10 , Maya B Mathur  11
Affiliations

Evidence for Infant-directed Speech Preference Is Consistent Across Large-scale, Multi-site Replication and Meta-analysis

Martin Zettersten et al. Open Mind (Camb). .

Abstract

There is substantial evidence that infants prefer infant-directed speech (IDS) to adult-directed speech (ADS). The strongest evidence for this claim has come from two large-scale investigations: i) a community-augmented meta-analysis of published behavioral studies and ii) a large-scale multi-lab replication study. In this paper, we aim to improve our understanding of the IDS preference and its boundary conditions by combining and comparing these two data sources across key population and design characteristics of the underlying studies. Our analyses reveal that both the meta-analysis and multi-lab replication show moderate effect sizes (d ≈ 0.35 for each estimate) and that both of these effects persist when relevant study-level moderators are added to the models (i.e., experimental methods, infant ages, and native languages). However, while the overall effect size estimates were similar, the two sources diverged in the effects of key moderators: both infant age and experimental method predicted IDS preference in the multi-lab replication study, but showed no effect in the meta-analysis. These results demonstrate that the IDS preference generalizes across a variety of experimental conditions and sampling characteristics, while simultaneously identifying key differences in the empirical picture offered by each source individually and pinpointing areas where substantial uncertainty remains about the influence of theoretically central moderators on IDS preference. Overall, our results show how meta-analyses and multi-lab replications can be used in tandem to understand the robustness and generalizability of developmental phenomena.

Keywords: infant-directed speech; looking time preference; mega-analysis; meta-analysis; multi-lab replication.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interests.

Figures

<b>Figure 1.</b>
Figure 1.
Forest plot of studies’ point estimates and 95% confidence intervals in the MA (top panel) and MLR (bottom panel). Orange diamonds: pooled estimates within each source. Dashed vertical line: null.
<b>Figure 2.</b>
Figure 2.
Forest plot showing, for each categorical candidate moderator, the pooled point estimates for the subset of studies in the MA and in the MLR, respectively, with a given level of the moderator (including only levels with at least 5 observations). Error bars are 95% confidence intervals. Error bars for many estimates are wide due to a limited number of observations at certain levels of a given moderator variable. Dashed vertical lines are unadjusted estimates in all MA studies and in all MLR studies. These lines overlap because the two estimates are virtually identical.
<b>Figure 3.</b>
Figure 3.
Overview of the distribution of effect sizes in the meta-analysis (MA) and replications (MLR) for three key moderators: infant age (A), method (B), and test language (C). In (A), the black line represents a linear fit through the effect sizes for each source and error bars for individual estimates are 95% confidence intervals.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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