Evolutionary Background of Precise Vocal–Respiratory Temporal Coordination in Human Infants
Miki Takahasi, Reiko Mazuka · 2026
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Description
Miki Takahasi and Reiko Mazuka review how babies learn to time voice and breath together, a skill speech depends on. Babies babble in bursts of sound and silence, and those bursts must ride on steady airflow past the voice box. The authors trace two settings: solo babbling and face-to-face exchanges. They mark a shift in the second half of the first year. Timing then steadies with breathing, and later it turns flexible for social use.
To explain the shift, they compare songbirds and marmosets and weigh swallowing, which needs the same tight timing to keep food from the airway. Early spoon feeding and a sinking voice box may have raised the stakes for safe timing in human babies, laying groundwork for speech.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Miki Takahasi, Reiko Mazuka |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 35 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |