Developmental Science最新文献

{"title":"From Visual Attention to Literacy: Symbol Search Deficit Predicts Future Reading Difficulties From Age 3","authors":"Audrey Vialatte,&nbsp;Eric Chabanat,&nbsp;Pierre-Emmanuel Aguera,&nbsp;Agnes Witko,&nbsp;Laure Pisella","doi":"10.1111/desc.70258","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70258","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Poor reading has been associated with impaired simultaneous visual processing of multiple graphic symbols composed of separable features, a behavioral marker of reduced visual attention based on parietal dysfunction. We designed a visual search screening test, consisting of finding the (unique) black circle among circles combined with a bar of various length and location (black symbols) versus among circles of various colors. The temporal Gap between these symbol and color search conditions was previously validated as a significant visuo-attentional contributor of reading between ages 8 and 11, predicting its performance with moderate sensitivity, as reading difficulty is multifactorial, but high specificity. Here, we established its good positive predictive value in a longitudinal study with the same children being screened in kindergarten (at 3, 4, or 5 years old) and later assessed for reading performance at the second semester of third grade (at 8 years old). We also assessed 4 and/or 5 years old children with the knowledge of letter names, the early reading of classmates’ first names and of small frequent words. The visual search screening test predicted future reading performance with lower correlation strength but as early as 3 years old, providing more lead time for specific preventive educational or clinical intervention during kindergarten in a subgroup whose pathological visual search performance at Age 3 was associated with a 5.7 times greater likelihood of later reading difficulties.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13392321/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148563272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"School Entry Deferral: Effects of Age and Schooling on Children's Longitudinal Executive Function Development and Parent-Reported Socio-Emotional and Regulatory Outcomes","authors":"Heather G. Simpson,&nbsp;Nicolas Chevalier,&nbsp;Josie N. Booth","doi":"10.1111/desc.70257","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70257","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Whether an optimal school-entry age exists is widely debated. A sequential cohort longitudinal design was used to investigate how school-entry deferral affected executive function development, and parent-reported socio-emotional and self-regulatory outcomes in 110 children (majority White) over one academic year. Groups comprised: 35 Deferred School Entrants (M_age = 66 months, 17 females), 31 Non-deferred School Entrants (M_age = 57 months, 13 females), and 44 Deferred Pre-schoolers (M_age = 55 months, 22 females). Deferral was associated with improved parent-reported socio-emotional and self-regulatory outcomes, especially in children with initially lower scores, while schooling benefited working memory progress. Further, older children started school with better working memory and inhibitory control relative to younger school entrants, although baseline differences had partly waned over the school year. These results highlight the value of accounting for regulatory skills underlying both cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes within school entrance age debates. Further research is required to determine if, and how, this might relate to academic outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13386192/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148537258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Newborns’ brains Detect Foreign Rhythm in Native-language Speech","authors":"Martina Dvořáková,&nbsp;Natálie Kikoťová,&nbsp;Josef Urbanec,&nbsp;Antonia Goetz,&nbsp;Kateřina Chládková","doi":"10.1111/desc.70254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70254","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Humans begin tuning in to the prosody of their native language even before birth. Previous studies with newborns have reported language-specific processing of forward versus backward speech and of intonational contours, as well as sensitivity to iambic versus trochaic patterns in non-linguistic tone stimuli. The present study investigated newborns’ processing of temporal rhythm patterns in naturalistic native-language speech. Czech-learning newborns (<i>N</i> = 44) listened to naturally recorded, well-formed Czech utterances with either native Czech rhythm (lacking prominent acoustic cues to word-level stress) or foreign-accented rhythm (featuring prolonged foot-initial syllables), while their hemodynamic activity was recorded. Results revealed larger hemodynamic responses to native-language speech with foreign rhythm than to native-language speech with native rhythm. This difference was most pronounced in the right hemisphere, indicating right-lateralized processing of speech rhythm differences. Traditional theories of language development have suggested that only broad, between-class rhythm differences among languages are processed at birth. By showing that newborns discriminate between native and foreign rhythmic patterns even when their native language falls outside traditional rhythm classifications, the present findings evidence that gradient temporal cues alone are sufficient for early language discrimination.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70254","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148467570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Family Language, Preschool, and Reading Achievement: The Interplay Between Inequality in Opportunities and Outcomes","authors":"Andrés Strello,&nbsp;Nurullah Eryılmaz,&nbsp;Rolf Strietholt","doi":"10.1111/desc.70256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70256","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This article examines preschool attendance and reading proficiency among students from families that do not speak the test language at home. Both indicators are key targets of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to promote equity in education. We analyze gaps in reading achievement and preschool participation between students who speak the test language at home and those who do not. The study also considers how these gaps intersect with socioeconomic background, focusing on students who face both linguistic and economic barriers. Using data from the 15 education systems that participated in all progress in international reading literacy study (PIRLS) cycles, we assess how these gaps have developed over time. Our findings show that significant gaps persist in most educational systems and, in some cases, have even widened. These social inequalities are especially marked among students with low socioeconomic status. We further examine how preschool attendance relates to reading achievement in grade 4 and whether this relationship varies by language and socioeconomic background. The analysis reveals that preschool attendance is particularly beneficial for students from non-test-language and lower socioeconomic backgrounds-groups that are also less likely to have access to early education. Our findings highlight a paradox: the children who would benefit most from attending preschool are those least likely to have access to it.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Summary</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Access to preschool for non-test-language students has stagnated, with a growing gap in access between families speaking the test language at home and those who do not.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>A persistent basic literacy gap exists between family language groups, especially among students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Preschool attendance improves basic literacy outcomes, especially for doubly disadvantaged students from non-test-language backgrounds and lower socioeconomic status.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>This presents a notable paradox: those who benefit the most from attending pre-primary education are also the ones that are least likely to attend.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148467572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Performance and Biases of the LENA and ACLEW Algorithms in Analyzing Language Environments in Down, Fragile X, Angelman Syndromes, and Populations at Elevated Likelihood for Autism","authors":"Marvin Lavechin,&nbsp;Lisa R. Hamrick,&nbsp;Bridgette Kelleher,&nbsp;Amanda Seidl","doi":"10.1111/desc.70239","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70239","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;div&gt;\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 &lt;section&gt;\u0000 \u0000 &lt;p&gt;Wearable recorders are used in research and clinical practice to collect and measure children's vocalizations and the language environment in which they occur. Recordings generate vast amounts of audio, making manual analysis impractical and requiring automated processing. Two automated algorithms have emerged: the proprietary LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis) and the open-source ACLEW (Analyzing Child Language Experiences around the World) systems; yet, systematic performance comparisons remain scarce. Here, we validate and compare the performance of these two algorithms across key measures: audio segmentation into speaker categories, conversational turn count (CTC), adult word count (AWC), and child vocalization count (CVC). This analysis is based on 25 h of manually annotated audio recordings from 50 age-matched U.S. children with diverse neurodevelopmental profiles: children with Down syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, and Angelman syndrome, children at elevated likelihood of autism, and low-risk controls. We hypothesized that the algorithms might be less accurate for children with neurodevelopmental conditions, since these children often show different patterns of volubility and vocal maturity compared to the typically developing children used to train the algorithms. Thus, we assessed the performance of algorithms across diagnostic groups, a crucial validation step for both cross-population research and the evaluation of language interventions. Results reveal that while algorithms achieve similar performance across groups, they show different patterns: LENA makes fewer segmentation mistakes but misses many segments (identification error rate = 81.3%, percent correct = 45.3%), while ACLEW shows the opposite pattern (identification error rate = 129.4%, percent correct = 69.4%). Both LENA and ACLEW achieve reasonable levels of accuracy in their automatic counts (Pearson's &lt;i&gt;r&lt;/i&gt; ranging from 0.78 to 0.92) and maintain stable performance across diagnostic groups. We conclude with recommendations for the validation and potential use of these algorithms in research and clinical practice.&lt;/p&gt;\u0000 &lt;/section&gt;\u0000 \u0000 &lt;section&gt;\u0000 \u0000 &lt;h3&gt; Summary&lt;/h3&gt;\u0000 \u0000 &lt;div&gt;\u0000 &lt;ul&gt;\u0000 \u0000 &lt;li&gt;Our comparison of the LENA and ACLEW algorithms in analyzing children's language environment and vocal production across five neurodevelopmental profiles reveals similar performance but distinct error patterns.&lt;/li&gt;\u0000 \u0000 &lt;li&gt;LENA makes fewer errors but misses speech (81.3% error rate, 45.3% correct); ACLEW makes more errors but captures more speech (129.4% error rate, 69.4% correct).&lt;/li&gt;\u0000 \u0000 &lt;li&gt;Both algorithms maintain consistent performance across diagnostic groups, supporting thei","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70239","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148406385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Differential Development of Object and Location Processing is a Critical Factor to a Child's Passing or Failing Explicit False-Belief Tasks","authors":"Rebecca J. Rennert,&nbsp;Annie Cheng,&nbsp;Virginia Chambers,&nbsp;Sabrina Flores,&nbsp;Güldehan Durman,&nbsp;Daniel D. Dilks","doi":"10.1111/desc.70250","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70250","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>It is well-documented that 5-year-olds consistently pass explicit false-belief tasks—one of the most common tests for assessing “Theory of Mind” (ToM). But what about younger children? While some studies find that 3- and 4-year-olds fail explicit false-belief tasks, other studies find that these same age children pass such tasks, leading to confusion about exactly when, and why, children pass false-belief tasks. Traditionally, explicit false-belief tasks include scenarios with object changes (e.g., Smarties task) or location changes (e.g., Sally-Anne task). However, object and location information are prioritized differentially throughout development, with preschoolers weighting cues about objects over locations. Thus, here we ask whether a child younger than 5 years old could pass an explicit false-belief task about objects yet fail one about locations, hypothesizing that the development of information processing is a critical factor that contributes to false-belief performance. To directly test this hypothesis, 3- to 5-year-olds participated in a novel explicit false-belief task with independent object- and location-change trials. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found i) that all participants performed significantly better on object than location trials, and ii) a significant number of 3- and 4-year-olds who passed the object trials yet failed the location trials. These findings demonstrate that when testing the development of false belief (or potentially any other cognitive abilities using object and location information), one must consider developmental differences in information processing, since such differences can yield opposite answers and, crucially, opposite conclusions.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148406426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cascading Periods of Language-Related Brain Plasticity Across Early Childhood","authors":"Monica E. Ellwood-Lowe,&nbsp;Monami Nishio,&nbsp;Alexander J. Dufford,&nbsp;Michael Arcaro,&nbsp;Theodore D. Satterthwaite,&nbsp;Allyson P. Mackey","doi":"10.1111/desc.70248","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70248","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Language is thought to have multiple sensitive periods in early childhood, but the neural basis of these sensitive periods is less understood. We leverage advances in in-vivo neuroimaging of plasticity, measuring the neural inhibition across the brain via Hurst exponent. Using two large datasets with children ages 10 months to 18 years (Baby Connectome Project: 10m-3y6m, 458 observations across <i>n</i> = 222 children; Human Connectome Project-Development: 5–18y, <i>n</i> = 437), we characterize the development of the Hurst exponent in language-related brain regions. In early childhood, Hurst increases in temporal and frontal language areas, and posterior regions develop earlier than anterior regions. In contrast, thalamic Hurst plateaus earlier, perhaps underlying the earliest language-related sensitive periods. Children with higher language-related skills show slower increases in cortical Hurst in early childhood, suggesting protracted plasticity. Later in childhood, cortical Hurst plateaus around age 9, suggesting a potential neural mechanism for age-related declines syntax learning. These results highlight a potential neural basis for cascading language-related sensitive periods.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148398594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Developmental Unity and Cultural Variation in Forms of Metarepresentational False Belief Understanding","authors":"Ljubica Petrović,&nbsp;Tonico Deodato,&nbsp;Hannes Rakoczy,&nbsp;Daniel B. M. Haun,&nbsp;Roman Stengelin","doi":"10.1111/desc.70249","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70249","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Around age four, children in urban, post-industrial societies begin to understand the subjectivity of beliefs and other mental states: they can be true or false, and they are aspectual, representing situations under specific descriptions. These two insights have been found to emerge in tandem, suggesting a shift toward a metarepresentational Theory of Mind. However, as evidence for this shift comes primarily from formally educated, urban, post-industrial societies, its broader generalizability remains speculative. Moreover, standard pretense-heavy false belief tasks may bias conclusions drawn from existing cross-cultural work. In a preregistered, multi-method study, we assessed two versions of false belief tasks (change-of-location and aspectual) in children from two rural Namibian communities (Hai||om, <i>N</i> = 65; Khwe, <i>N</i> = 35, ages 3–9) and an urban German community (Leipzig, <i>N</i> = 66, ages 3–6). We compared two task formats that differed in their reliance on pretense (a real agent and objects vs. depictions thereof). Task format did not affect Leipzig or Khwe children's performance, but Hai||om children showed a better belief understanding in the realistic task format. Across cultures and task formats, change-of-location and aspectual false belief tasks were robustly linked at the individual level. These results show universality without uniformity: besides variation in overall performance and task format sensitivity, children across diverse cultures show closely aligned performance across belief tasks, consistent with accounts proposing a shared metarepresentational basis of Theory of Mind.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Summary</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Standard change-of-location and aspectual false belief tasks are tightly linked at the individual level across rural Namibian (Hai||om and Khwe) and urban German (Leipzig) communities.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>This developmental unity holds despite cross-cultural differences in overt task performance.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Rural Hai||om children perform better in realistic (versus pretense) tasks, whereas Khwe and Leipzig children show no such task format advantage.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>The findings support a universal but non-uniform emergence of a metarepresentational foundation of belief understanding.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70249","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148398832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Recognition of Familiar Wordforms and Phonological Variation in Akan by Multilingual Infants Learning African Tone Languages in Ghana","authors":"Paul Okyere Omane,&nbsp;Reginald Akuoko Duah,&nbsp;Thierry Nazzi","doi":"10.1111/desc.70253","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70253","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent developmental evidence shows that the proposal that consonants are more important than vowels for lexical processing is not universal but language-specific. In non-tone languages, a consonant bias emerges early in development in Romance languages (e.g., French) but later in Germanic languages (e.g., English), while evidence from Asian tone languages (Mandarin, Cantonese) shows a reverse vowel bias. The V-bias in tone languages has been linked to the presence of lexical tones—mainly carried by vowels—which may increase vowel prominence. The present study tests the hypothesis that a V-bias is more generally found in tone languages by examining infants learning an understudied African tone language, Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo). More specifically, we tested Akan-learning multilingual infants (11–14 months) in Ghana (Sub-Saharan Africa) in a wordform recognition task, using a central fixation procedure. After establishing that these infants preferred familiar Akan words over pseudowords (Experiment 1), Experiment 2 assessed whether one-feature consonant or vowel mispronunciations of these words would differentially block recognition, indicative of a V-bias. Infants showed comparable sensitivity to consonant and vowel mispronunciations, failing to establish a bias in these infants. Both findings were not modulated by age and relative exposure to Akan (and also relative exposure to tone languages in Experiment 2). Our findings add to existing evidence that early lexical processing is language-specific. They also suggest that the emergence of a V-bias in tone languages may depend on tone complexity and developmental age.</p>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/desc.70253","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148399140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring Variation in Infants' Preference for Infant-directed Speech: Evidence From a Multi-Site Study in Africa","authors":"Angeline Sin Mei Tsui,&nbsp;Alexandra Carstensen,&nbsp;George Kachergis,&nbsp;Anjie Cao,&nbsp;Amina Abubakar,&nbsp;Mulat Asnake,&nbsp;Oumar Barry,&nbsp;Dana M. Basnight-Brown,&nbsp;Dangkat Bentu,&nbsp;Christina Bergmann,&nbsp;Evans Binan Dami,&nbsp;Natalie Boll-Avetisyan,&nbsp;Marguerite de Jongh,&nbsp;Yatma Diop,&nbsp;Reginald Akuoko Duah,&nbsp;Esther Herrmann,&nbsp;Chaning Jang,&nbsp;Simon Kizito,&nbsp;Tilinao Lamba,&nbsp;Limbika Maliwichi-Senganimalunje,&nbsp;Joyce Marangu,&nbsp;Maya Mathur,&nbsp;Catherine V. Mbagaya,&nbsp;Demeke Mekonnen Mengistie,&nbsp;Carmen Milton,&nbsp;Febronie Mushimiyimana,&nbsp;Mikateko Ndhambi,&nbsp;Irene Ngina,&nbsp;Eunice Njoroge,&nbsp;Paul Odhiambo Oburu,&nbsp;Asana Okocha,&nbsp;Paul Okyere Omane,&nbsp;Anisha Singh,&nbsp;Andrew S. Ssemata,&nbsp;Juliette Unyuzumutima,&nbsp;Henriette Zeidler,&nbsp;Casey Lew-Williams,&nbsp;Michael C. Frank","doi":"10.1111/desc.70242","DOIUrl":"10.1111/desc.70242","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Infants show a preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). This preference has been linked to infants' language processing and word learning in experimental settings, and also correlates with later language outcomes. Recently, the cross-cultural consistency of infants' IDS preference has been confirmed by large-scale, multisite replication studies, but conclusions from these studies were primarily based on participants from North America and Europe. The current study addressed this sampling bias via a large-scale, multisite study of infants (3–15 months) across communities in Africa. We investigated whether participants showed a preference for IDS over ADS, and if so, whether the magnitude of their preference differs from effects documented in other populations of infants. Across six sites (total <i>N</i> = 200), we observed a preference for IDS over ADS (<span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <msub>\u0000 <mover>\u0000 <mi>β</mi>\u0000 <mo>̂</mo>\u0000 </mover>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>IDS</mi>\u0000 <mspace></mspace>\u0000 <mi>vs</mi>\u0000 <mo>.</mo>\u0000 <mspace></mspace>\u0000 <mi>ADS</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 </msub>\u0000 <annotation>$hat{beta }_{mathrm{IDS vs. ADS}}$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> = 0.06), suggesting that infants look on average 6% longer on the IDS trials than the ADS trials. There was no significant difference between African infants in this study and a method-matched subsample of infants from prior studies of IDS preference. This study provides new evidence on the generalizability of IDS preference and looking-time methods more broadly, while also highlighting some of the challenges of global big team science.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Summary</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>This study demonstrates a reliable infant-directed speech preference among African infants aged 3–15 months using a large-scale, multisite experimental design.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Our findings showed no significant difference in IDS preference magnitude between African infants and method-matched samples from prior North American and European MB1 studies.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Our study provides evidence for the cross-cultural generalizability of IDS preference while identifying practical challenges of conducting international multisite developmental research.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48392,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Science","volume":"29 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148399179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}