It’s still early days so we don’t have any publications out just yet, but here is some information about papers we’re writing at the moment.
Belia, M., Oxley, F. A. R., Bailey, G., Blake, C., Cox, C. M. M., Gully, A., Madhavan, R., & Laing, C. E.
This paper talks about how we developed our approach to capturing ultrasound images of the tongue. We incorporated some ideas from previous studies with new ideas and new questions from us at the York BabyLab, and worked with babies of a range of ages and their families to make our data collection sessions fun and informative. At the York BabyLab, we’re really interested in how the things babies say, do, and hear day-to-day work together to guide their development and so we try to make our ultrasound sessions as natural as possible. In this paper we also talk about some of the different ways that we analyse our ultrasound data.
And here is some information about the studies that we’re currently running. Once these studies are complete, we’ll write papers explaining what the studies involved and what we learned from them.
Rajalakshmi Madhavan, Charlotte Blake, Florence A. R. Oxley, Kylan Smith, Catherine E. Laing
Here, we talk about our listening preference study with 4-5-month-olds, run over Zoom, who are taking part in our year-long study. This study involves one short experiment where babies hear some sounds that they have made themselves and sounds another baby has made. Past studies have found evidence to suggest that babies respond differently to their own sounds compared with sounds from others, but it is not yet clear why this is. Some authors have suggested that babies may pay more attention to actions and events that involve more effort from them or that give them richer or more interesting sensory feedback. Hearing another person make sounds is a passive experience that gives only auditory information, whereas producing a sound on purpose involves planning and action, and gives auditory information and tactile sensations in the mouth and throat. To explore these ideas in more depth, we compare how babies respond to coughs (which happen involuntarily) and early vowel-like sounds (which they choose to make) produced by themselves or another baby.
Catherine E. Laing, Florence A. R. Oxley, Rajalakshmi Madhavan, Kylan Smith, Charlotte Blake
In this pre-registration, we talk about our ultrasound study with 4-6-month-olds, which looks at how babies move their tongues when they see and hear people speaking or doing other non-speech mouth movements (i.e., eating). Some previous research evidence has suggested that babies of this age might move their tongues when they hear speech and that these movements might play some role in helping babies to learn to say these sounds in their babble. Some other research has suggested that tongue movements in eating may also play a supporting role. Because it is difficult to see inside the mouth without disrupting babies’ normal behaviour, there has been no direct evidence for these ideas so far. However, advances in ultrasound imaging have made it possible to explore these ideas further, and that is what we do here.
Florence A. R. Oxley, Charlotte Blake, Kylan Smith, Rajalakshmi Madhavan, Catherine E. Laing
This pre-registration talks about our listening preference experiments for 7-9-month-olds in our year-long study, which we also run over Zoom. Babies involved in this study take part in 3 mini experiments where they hear different pairs of syllables. Past research has shown us that, around this time, babies are learning about what sounds feature in the everyday speech they hear around them and what sounds don’t. We also know that, around this time, babies may begin to say some sounds themselves in their babble. We want to learn more about how babies’ respond when they hear others say familiar or unfamiliar sounds that they can or can’t yet say themselves.
Catherine E. Laing, Florence A. R. Oxley, Kylan Smith, Charlotte Blake
This pre-registration is about our second ultrasound study with 10-14-month-olds, where we look at babies’ tongue movements when they see and hear people saying words and sentences containing different kinds of speech sounds. These include sounds that some babies of this age may be able to say already and other sounds that babies typically don’t begin to say until much later. As part of this study, we also use home recording data from these babies to learn about what kinds of sounds they produce the most and the least. Because it has not been possible until recently to directly view babies’ tongue movements, we know little about the role these might play in their learning of speech and language. We are interested to learn whether babies move their tongues more or less when they hear sounds that they can or cannot yet say themselves.
Florence A. R. Oxley, Charlotte Blake, Rajalakshmi Madhavan, Catherine E. Laing
This pre-registration talks about a listening preference study we plan to run over Zoom with babies aged 4-5 months. This is a one-off experiment for babies who are not taking part in our year-long study. Babies will hear some early vowel-like sounds produced by another 4-5-month-old baby and some computer-synthesised vowel-like sounds that we have created to match the pitch and resonance of that other baby’s sounds. We know that young babies tend to prefer listening to higher-pitched, more exaggerated speech – think of baby-talk – and we know that this is helpful for their language development. Some previous research has found evidence that babies may prefer not only higher-pitched voices but specifically more baby-like voices. This may be because they recognise a similarity between baby-like voices and their own voice. However, this research has so far only used synthesised voices, which do not sound human and so may capture babies’ interest for other reasons. Our study will help us to understand more about what makes the human voice interesting to babies and how they might learn from hearing and interacting with adults, children, and other babies around them.
Here is some information about conferences and other venues where we’ve spoken about the project so far.
Laing, C. E. (7th October 2025). Articulatory movement in the infant vocal tract: an ultrasound study. [Invited talk]. Lancaster Phonetics Lab, Lancaster. UK
Oxley, F. A. R., Blake, C., Madhavan, R., & Laing, C. (8th-10th September 2025). Baby vs. Machine: Do infants prefer listening to natural or synthesised infant vocalisations? [Poster]. Child Language Symposium (CLS 2025). Reading, UK.
Madhavan, R., Blake, C., Oxley, F. A. R., & Laing, C. (8th-10th September 2025). Evaluating 4.5-month-old infants’ preference for self-vocalisations during vocal play. [Talk]. Child Language Symposium (CLS 2025). Reading, UK.
Belia, M., Bailey, G., Blake, C., Cox, C. M. M., Gully, A., Madhavan, R., Oxley, F. A. R., & Laing, C. E. (16th-17th June 2025). The development of the infant vocal tract: an ultrasound study. [Poster]. UK and Ireland Speech Workshop (UKIS 2025). York, UK.
Belia, M., Bailey, G., Blake, C., Cox, C. M. M., Gully, A., Madhavan, R., Oxley, F. A. R., & Laing, C. E. (4th-6th June 2025). The development of the infant vocal tract: an ultrasound study. [Poster]. Workshop on Infant Language Development (WILD 2025). San Sebastian, Spain.
Madhavan, R., Blake, C., Oxley, F. A. R., & Laing, C. (4th-6th June 2025). Evaluating 4.5-month-old infants’ preference for self-vocalisations during vocal play. [Poster]. Workshop on Infant Language Development (WILD 2025). San Sebastian, Spain.
Oxley, F. A. R., Blake, C., Madhavan, R., & Laing, C. (4th-6th June 2025). Baby vs. Machine: Do infants prefer listening to natural or synthesised infant vocalisations? [Poster]. Workshop on Infant Language Development (WILD 2025). San Sebastian, Spain.
Belia, M., Bailey, G., Blake, C., Cox, C. M. M., Gully, A., Madhavan, R., Oxley, F. A. R., & Laing, C. E. (28th-30th May, 2025). The development of the infant vocal tract: an ultrasound study. [Talk]. International Child Phonology Conference (ICPC 2025). Budapest, Hungary.
Belia, M., Bailey, G., Cobb, S., Cox, C. M. M., Gully, A., Oxley, F. A. R., & Laing, C. (8th-11th July 2024). The development of the infant vocal tract: an ultrasound study. [Poster]. International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS 2024). Glasgow, Scotland.