Native Accents in Infants' Cries - A primitive mechanism to optimise caregiver responses, and the foundation of spoken language

Human Infants are born crying with an accent that reflects the pitch accent of the language of the environment in which they gestate.

This project concerns itself with this from two perspectives:

1. How does a fetus learn to implement an accent, despite having no opportunity to practice vocalisation in utero?
2. Is there a benefit to a newborn of crying with a “native” accent?

In order to address these questions we examine the acoustic features of infants’ cries that make them more or less aversive or salient to potential caregivers and the in utero cerebral processes that underpin acquisition of early precursors of human speech.