This research was designed to assess 7-week-old infants' preference for infant directed and adult directed talk. (IDT and ADT) using the infant controlled habituation/dishabituation looking procedure. Infants were presented with short audio recordings of either a female or a male speaking in IDT during habituation and ADT during dishabituation or the reverse. In the control conditions, the stimulus did not change. Infants demonstrated preference for IDT over ADT in both male and female speaker conditions. They also demonstrated preference for the female speaker used in this study over the male speaker. Interactions among the dependent variables (first three looks), and the independent variables (infant gender, and style of speaking as well as infant gender, and speaker gender), suggest that the preference might not be as robust as the preference found in infants over 4 months. Evidence for discrimination between IDT and ADT was inferred from the between group demonstration of preference, but no evidence of within infant discrimination was found. Because the evidence suggests that 7-week-old infants demonstrate weaker preference for IDT over ADT than do infants of 4 months, it is assumed that infant preferences follow a developmental sequence. Thus, it is possible that developing preferences are influenced by experiential factors. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [114]-119).