The function and evolution of child-directed communication

Johanna  Schick; Caroline  Fryns; Franziska Wegdell; Marion Laporte; Klaus Zuberbühler; Carel P.  van Schaik; Simon W.  Townsend; Sabine  Stoll

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3001630

The function and evolution of child-directed communication

Johanna Schick, Caroline Fryns, Franziska Wegdell, Marion Laporte, Klaus Zuberbühler, Carel P. van Schaik^*, Simon W. Townsend, Sabine Stoll^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Humans communicate with small children in unusual and highly conspicuous ways (child- directed communication (CDC)), which enhance social bonding and facilitate language acquisition. CDC-like inputs are also reported for some vocally learning animals, suggesting similar functions in facilitating communicative competence. However, adult great apes, our closest living relatives, rarely signal to their infants, implicating communication surrounding the infant as the main input for infant great apes and early humans. Given cross-cultural variation in the amount and structure of CDC, we suggest that child-surrounding communication (CSC) provides essential compensatory input when CDC is less prevalent—a paramount topic for future studies.

Original language	English
Number of pages	17
Journal	PLoS Biology
Volume	20
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001630
Publication status	Published - 6 May 2022

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Copyright: © 2022 Schick et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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abstract = "Humans communicate with small children in unusual and highly conspicuous ways (child- directed communication (CDC)), which enhance social bonding and facilitate language acquisition. CDC-like inputs are also reported for some vocally learning animals, suggesting similar functions in facilitating communicative competence. However, adult great apes, our closest living relatives, rarely signal to their infants, implicating communication surrounding the infant as the main input for infant great apes and early humans. Given cross-cultural variation in the amount and structure of CDC, we suggest that child-surrounding communication (CSC) provides essential compensatory input when CDC is less prevalent—a paramount topic for future studies.",

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AU - Townsend, Simon W.

AU - Stoll, Sabine

N1 - Funding: Writing this article was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Evolving Language, Swiss National Science Foundation Agreement 51NF40 180888 for JS, CF, FW, KZ, CPvS, SWT and SS. SWT was additionally funded by Swiss National Science Foundation grant PP00P3_198912.

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The function and evolution of child-directed communication

Abstract

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