A对儿童说话的典型方式——高音调、夸张、重复——对那些希望理解“儿语”如何影响学习的语言学家而言是充满吸引力的。多数婴儿在母亲的子宫中就开始发展听力了，这促使一些满怀希望的家长为自己未出生的孩子播放古典音乐，一些研究甚至表明婴儿早在出生前10周就能听到成人说话，并获得所在家庭中母语的基本元素。

A The typical way of talking to a baby-High-pitched, exaggerated and repetitious - is a source of fascination for linguists who hope to understand how 'baby talk' impacts on learning. Most babies start developing their hearing while still in the womb, prompting some hopeful parents to play classical music to their pregnant bellies. Some research even suggests that infants are listening to adult speech as early as 10 weeks before being born, gathering the basic building blocks of their family's native tongue.

B较早接触语言或许对大脑有些好处，例如，研究表明在双语家庭中成长的儿童可以更好地学习如何处理信息，那么对婴儿来说，这些听起来很悦耳，甚至有时较为夸张的语言，是如何影响婴儿成长的？以下是最近一些探索儿语背后科学的研究。

B Early language exposure seems to have benefits to the brain - for instance, studies suggest that babies raised in bilingual homes are better at learning how to mentally prioritize information. So how does the sweet if sometimes absurd sound of infant- directed speech influence a baby's development? Here are some recent studies that explore the science behind baby talk.

C根据一项新研究，父亲并不像母亲那样经常使用儿语，方式也不一样——这是完全没问题的。斯波坎华盛州立大学的 Mark VanDam和他的同事们给家长们配备了录音设备和语音识别软件，以研究他们在日常一天中与孩子们的交流方式。“我们发现母亲在做的确实是体们所期望并多次描述的”，Vanda解释道，“但是我们发现父亲并没有在做同样的事情。父亲们在同孩子们说话时并投有提高音调或基本频率。”他们的角色或许基于所谓的“桥梁假说”，这一说法可以追测到1975年。该假说认为父亲使用比较少的家庭化语言以提供给孩子们一个桥梁，从而过渡到他们在公开场合听到的语言。“这一观点认为儿童同母亲练习一种特定的说话方式并与父亲练习另外一种，这就使儿童得以对各种说话方式进行更广泛的练习”， Vanan说。

C Fathers don't use baby talk as often or in the same ways as mothers - and that's perfectly OK, according to a new study. Mark VanDam of Washington State University at Spokane and colleagues equipped parents with recording devices and speech-recognition software to study the way they interacted with their youngsters during a normal day. 'We found that moms do exactly what you'd expect and what's been described many times over,' VanDam explains. 'But we found that dads aren't doing the same thing. Dads didn't raise their pitch or fundamental frequency when they talked to kids.' Their role may be rooted in what is called the bridge hypothesis, which dates back to 1975. It suggests that fathers use less familial language to provide their children with a bridge to the kind of speech they'll hear in public. 'The idea is that a kid gets to practice a certain kind of speech with mom and another kind of speech with dad, so the kid then has a wider repertoire of kinds of speech to practice,' says VanDam.

D华盛顿大学和康涅狄格大学的科学家们收集了数千条家长与孩子之间时长为30秒的对话，给26位儿童配备了可以在一天8小时中获取语言和声音的录音背心。研究发现家长使用的儿语越多，他们的孩子越会试图跟着说话。当研究者观察两岁儿童时，他们发现频繁出现的儿语显著促进了词汇量的增加，不论社会经济地位如何。“那些听了大量儿语的儿童相比那些听成年人语言或者标准语言的孩子说话更多”，康捏狄格大学的 Nairan Ramirez-Esparza说。“我们同样发现是否在一对一的情景下使用儿语也会有很大影响”，她补充道。“家长在一对一沟通的时候使用儿语越多，儿童就越会试图学着说话，儿童越学着说话，他们在以后的生活中使用的词汇就会越多。”

D Scientists from the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut collected thousands of 30-second conversations between parents and their babies, fitting 26 children with audio-recording vests that captured language and sound during a typical eight-hour day. The study found that the more baby talk parents used, the more their youngsters began to babble. And when researchers saw the same babies at age two, they found that frequent baby talk had dramatically boosted vocabulary, regardless of socioeconomic status. 'Those children who listened to a lot of baby talk were talking more than the babies that listened to more adult talk or standard speech,' says Nairán Ramírez-Esparza of the University of Connecticut. 'We also found that it really matters whether you use baby talk in a one-on-one context,' she adds. The more parents use baby talk one-on-one, the more babies babble, and the more they babble, the more words they produce later in life.

E另一项研究表明家长或许希望与自己的孩子们一起，这样他们可以试着说更多自己的语言。麦吉尔大学和魁北克蒙特利尔大学的研究者们发现儿童或许喜欢听互相之间的话语而非成年人的——这或许解释了为什么儿语是家长普遍使用的工具。他们播放由一种特殊的合成设备制作的重复元音，这一设备模仿一位成年女性或一个儿童的声音。通过这种方式，只有听觉线索的影响被观测。该团队随后测量每种声音能够让婴儿保持关注多久。他们发现“婴儿的”声音能够让孩子保持关注多出接近40%的时间。婴儿的声音同样引起正在倾听的孩子们的更多反应，比如微笑或唇动，这都近似于发声的动作。该团队推断，这种被其他婴儿的声音吸引的过程，会有助于促进说话能力的学习。“或许声音中的某些特性正在吸引他们的注意力，”研究的合著者 Linda Polka说。“或者也有可能他们对那种特定的声音非常感兴趣是因为他们开始关注自身发声的能力。我们只是推断，但是这种声音可以引起他们的注意或许是因为他们将其作为自己或许可以发出的声音。”

E Another study suggests that parents might want to pair their youngsters up so they can babble more with their own kind. Researchers from McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal found that babies seem to like listening to each other rather than to adults - which may be why baby talk is such a universal tool among parents. They played repeating vowel sounds made by a special synthesizing device that mimicked sounds made by either an adult woman or another baby. This way, only the impact of the auditory cues was observed. The team then measured how long each type of sound held the infants' attention. They found that the 'infant' sounds held babies' attention nearly 40 percent longer. The baby noises also induced more reactions in the listening infants, like smiling or lip moving, which approximates sound making. The team theorizes that this attraction to other infant sounds could help launch the learning process that leads to speech. 'It may be some property of the sound that is just drawing their attention,' says study co-author Linda Polka. 'Or maybe they are really interested in that particular type of sound because they are starting to focus on their own ability to make sounds. We are speculating here but it might catch their attention because they recognize it as a sound they could possibly make.'

F在《美国科学院论文集》中发表的一项研究中，研究者给来自两个不同年龄组的（7个月以及11个半月）总共57名婴几播放其母语（英语）和非母语（四班牙语）的音节。这些婴儿佩戴了大脑激活扫描仪，这一设备可以记录指导运动机能的脑区的活动，这种运动会产生语言。结果表明听儿语会促进婴儿大脑开始练习语言技能。“当婴儿确实是在听些什么的时候，在大脑的运动区发现激活非常重要，因为这意味着婴儿的大脑从一开始就参与交流，并表明7个月儿童的大脑已经在试图弄清如何做出可以产生话语的正确活动”，共同研究的 Patricia Kuhl说。另一项有趣的发现是，无论何种语言，7个月大的儿童对所有声音都能作出反应，然而相比母语声音，年龄较大的婴儿的大脑在试图做出非母语声音的运动激活时需要更加努力。这一研究或许同样揭示了婴儿识别母语和其他语言的不同的过程。

F In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a total of 57 babies from two slightly different age groups - seven months and eleven and a half months - were played a number of syllables from both their native language (English) and a non-native tongue (Spanish). The infants were placed in a brain- activation scanner that recorded activity in a brain region known to guide the motor movements that produce speech. The results suggest that listening to baby talk prompts infant brains to start practicing their language skills. 'Finding activation in motor areas of the brain when infants are simply listening is significant, because it means the baby brain is engaged in trying to talk back right from the start, and suggests that seven-month-olds' brains are already trying to figure out how to make the right movements that will produce words,' says co-author Patricia Kuhl. Another interesting finding was that while the seven-month-olds responded to all speech sounds regardless of language, the brains of the older infants worked harder at the motor activations of non-native sounds compared to native sounds. The study may have also uncovered a process by which babies recognize differences between their native language and other tongues.