Infant-caregiver interactions affect the early development of vocalization

Vocal communication is a unique means to bilaterally exchange messages in real-time. The developmental origin of such communication is the vocal interactions between an infant and a caregiver, and one of the big mysteries is how the infant learns to vocalize the mother tongue of the caregiver. Many theories claim to explain an infant's capability to imitate a caregiver based on acoustic matching. However, the acoustic qualities of the infant and the caregiver are quite different, and, therefore, cannot fully explain the imitation. Instead, the interaction itself may have an important role, but the mechanism is still unclear. In this article, we review studies addressing this problem using constructive approaches based on cognitive developmental robotics.