Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
PLoS Biol. 2022 May 6;20(5):e3001630. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001630. eCollection 2022 May.
Humans communicate with small children in unusual and highly conspicuous ways (child-directed communication (CDC)), which enhance social bonding and facilitate language acquisition. CDC-like inputs are also reported for some vocally learning animals, suggesting similar functions in facilitating communicative competence. However, adult great apes, our closest living relatives, rarely signal to their infants, implicating communication surrounding the infant as the main input for infant great apes and early humans. Given cross-cultural variation in the amount and structure of CDC, we suggest that child-surrounding communication (CSC) provides essential compensatory input when CDC is less prevalent-a paramount topic for future studies.
人类以特殊且非常显著的方式与幼儿交流（指向儿童的交流（CDC）），这增强了社交联系并促进了语言习得。一些具有发声学习能力的动物也报告了类似指向儿童的交流输入，这表明其具有类似的促进交流能力的功能。然而，与我们亲缘关系最近的成年大型猿类很少向它们的幼崽发出信号，这表明围绕婴儿的交流是幼崽大猿类和早期人类的主要输入。鉴于指向儿童的交流的数量和结构在跨文化上存在差异，我们认为当指向儿童的交流不太普遍时，围绕儿童的交流（CSC）提供了必要的补偿输入——这是未来研究的一个重要课题。
