The role of the mother's voice in developing mother's ... - FIU Infant Lab

38
F. Z. Sai
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The data were expressed in terms of PTLT infants spent fixating the mother’s
face on each trial. Looking percentages for both trials were also averaged for each
participant (Table 2).
To assess the role of experience with the mother’s voice in facilitating
recognition of the mother’s face, single-sample t test were conducted on the
PTLTs to the mother’s face on trials 1, 2 and on the combined trials (Trials 1 and
2). As a group, the newborn infants failed to significantly discriminate and
recognize the face of the mother on trial 1 (tð13Þ ¼ 0:83, p ¼ ns), trial 2
(tð13Þ ¼0:92, p ¼ ns), and on the combined trials (tð13Þ ¼0:65, p ¼ ns). Figure 2
displays the means percentage preference for the mother’s face across trials.
Experience with the mother’s voice prior testing seems necessary for mother’s
face recognition. The question how much experience with the mother’s voice–
face is needed for such learning to develop remains however, unanswered.
Further analyses were conducted to determine whether preference for the
mother differed as a function of condition and position of the mother’s face. The
performance of the infants in Experiment 1 was compared to that of infants in
Experiment 2. A mixed factorial design with condition (voice vs no voice) and
side preferences (position of the mother on the right side vs left side) as main
factors revealed no main effects of condition (Fð1; 26Þ ¼3:09, p ¼ ns), side
preferences (Fð1; 26Þ ¼0:001, p ¼ ns) or interaction, condition X side preferences
(Fð1; 26Þ ¼0:099, p ¼ ns). The results indicated that although the newborn infants
showed no significant differences in their preferential behaviour across
conditions, a slight preference for the mother was demonstrated in the voice
condition (Table 3). Further, the infants demonstrated a slight preference for the
mother’s face shown on the left side in the voice experiment. This pattern was
however, reversed in the no-voice experiment. (Figure 3). Perhaps when infants
failed to discriminate between the two faces, they tended to look more to the right
side. This is consistent with early reports suggesting significant head turns
towards the right side in 3 month-old infants (Gesell and Ames, 1947; Turkewitz
et al., 1965). In a study by Bahrick et al. (1996) side preferences was however not
significant at 5 or 8 months.
An interview was conducted with the mother and the female stranger at the
end of the testing of each infant in the no-voice experiment. We asked whether
Figure 2. Percentage preference for the mother’s face across trials in the no voice
condition.
Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child Dev. 14: 29–50 (2005)