Children’s Use of Uptalk in Narratives

Uptalk refers to the use of rising intonation on declarative utterances. Previous research has shown that, at age 6 years, children use rising contours with declaratives more frequently than adults, and this pattern appears to persist until 14 years of age. However, it is unclear why such a trend persists. To gain a clearer developmental picture of uptalk, the present study analyzed the form and function of uptalk produced by children aged 6 to 7 and 10 to 11 years from the American Midwest, using a storytelling task. Contrary to previous findings, the results indicate that children of both age groups use uptalk in an adult-like way: they overwhelmingly favor L-H% over H-H% boundary tones, and most strongly associate the contour with continuation. The lack of age differences suggests that children’s use of uptalk is comparable to that of adults by the age of 6, at least in certain narrative contexts. The use of a familiar storytelling task in the current study may explain the greater success observed for children than in previous studies, suggesting the relative importance of the elicitation task in the investigation of child speech.