Children may learn words best from other children, not adults

From early on, young children are sensitive to talker-specific cues derived from voice-related cues. For example, infants recognize words and learn information best from familiar, female adult voices (e.g. maternal caregivers) relative to strangers or children’s voices. Considering that age can influence speech processing, we investigated whether toddlers exhibit similar selective attention and learning from voices of different-aged talkers. We recorded visual and auditory stimuli from adult males and females, and boys and girls. In this study, 24 toddlers were taught two novel labels, one by an adult talker and the other by a child talker of the same sex. Results showed that toddlers learned words more effectively from child talkers compared to adult talkers. These findings suggest that toddlers are sensitive to talker age information in speech and show a bias toward learning words from child talkers. We discuss potential origins of such a bias and the implications these findings may have.