Setting the Stage for Speech Production: Infants Prefer Listening to Speech Sounds With Infant Vocal Resonances.

Infants between 6 and 8 months of age displayed a robust and distinct preference for speech with resonances specifying a vocal tract that is similar in size and length to their own. This finding, together with data indicating that this preference is not present in younger infants and appears to increase with age, suggests that nascent knowledge of the motor schema of the vocal tract may play a role in shaping this perceptual bias, lending support to current models of speech development. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17131805.