BABIES and puppies have a lot in common. In addition to being small and cute, they prompt mothers to change the way they speak when addressing them, modifying their speech rate, their pitch and, above all, their elocution.
A team of researchers from the US's Virginia Tech and Pacific Lutheran University and France's École Normale Supérieure-PSL set out to discover the reasons why mothers naturally adapt their speech when talking to infants.Indeed, previous studies have shown that women who have had a child speak more clearly in the presence of a baby or a parrot. Scientists explained this finding by the fact that they were teaching them human language. But other studies have contradicted this explanation, showing that the clarity of mothers' speech is not systematic.
