Parallels in learning to talk and sing: Social mechanisms of vocal learning in baby humans and songbirds
Tuesday 7th May 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
How do babies learn to talk? Despite the immense variety of sounds we associate with the animal world, the ability to learn a vocal repertoire is a rare phenomenon, emerging in only a handful of groups, including humans. To gain a better understanding of the development and evolution of vocal learning, we will examine the processes by which birds learn to sing and human infants learn to talk. A key parallel in the vocal development of birds and babies is the social function of immature vocalizations. The responses of adults to the plastic song of birds and the babbling of babies create social feedback that guides the young towards mature vocalizations. I will present experiments demonstrating how the immature sounds of young birds and babies regulate and are regulated by social interactions. The form and timing of these interactions have strong influences on the development of mature birdsong and language. The difficulty of measuring rapid social interchanges organized by immature vocalizing has led many to overlook their importance and assume that young songbirds and human infants learn by passive exposure followed by motor practice. My data indicate that vocal learning is an active, socially-embedded process. By creating feedback that is both inherently informative and socially relevant, structured social interaction boosts the salience of acoustic patterns in the input and facilitates learning of speech and song.
Michael Goldstein
Michael Goldstein is a Professor of Psychology and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
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We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Thursday 1st May 2025
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Thursday 8th May 2025
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This five-part certificate course is designed to help participants learn the theory and practice of trauma-informed approaches. The concepts and activities included are tailored to meet the needs of voice specialists who want to acquire more specific tools to navigate the space with their students and colleagues.
Wednesday 7th May 2025
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Wednesday 14th May 2025
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12 week course! Sharpen your coaching skills, discover new tools, and learn how to connect more deeply with your clients in our advanced certificate in accents and phonetics for coaching actors. The course provides an in-depth look at some of the key fundamental aspects of coaching accents, like phonetics and prosody, as well as introducing some theory and practice-based concepts relating to the complexities of this field, such as coaching for neurodiverse performers, English as an additional language (EAL) speakers and identity politics.
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María Borragán Salcines
Carles Expósito Rovira
The vocal folds need a high degree of humidity to be able to vibrate at their normal high frequency. Hydration makes the tissue more flexible and more turgid. The moisture of the tissue is one of the first factors that is lost when there is a pathology or when an unusual overload is suffered. Voice professionals often deal with stress, anxiety, fatigue, and changes of temperature and environment like the dryness of the performing spaces, due to factors like air conditioning or heating. All these factors affect the voice and can make the performer activity more difficult!