What this cross-cultural robustness implies is that the simplification effect of contingent speech is likely to be present in many more language than the 13 we studied in this paper. 6/9

Only parental speech that was contingent (produced immediately following their children’s vocalizations) was simplified, even though both contingent and non-contingent speech were similar in child-directed exaggerated pitch. 4/9

In response to their child’s immature speech, caregivers produce fewer unique words, shorter utterances and more single-word utterances compared to caregivers’ baseline speech complexity. We call this the simplification effect of contingent speech. 3/9

w/ @mikehgoldstein.bsky.social & Jacob Levy we show that children’s immature vocalizations & speech actively elicit language from caregivers that is linguistically simplified & more learnable. We find this in 13 languages, showing a robust social pathway for making language learning easier to do 2/9

What this cross-cultural robustness implies is that the simplification effect of contingent speech is likely to be present in many more language than the 13 we studied in this paper. 6/9

Only parental speech that was contingent (produced immediately following their children’s vocalizations) was simplified, even though both contingent and non-contingent speech were similar in child-directed exaggerated pitch. 4/9

In response to their child’s immature speech, caregivers produce fewer unique words, shorter utterances and more single-word utterances compared to caregivers’ baseline speech complexity. We call this the simplification effect of contingent speech. 3/9

w/ @mikehgoldstein.bsky.social & Jacob Levy we show that children’s immature vocalizations & speech actively elicit language from caregivers that is linguistically simplified & more learnable. We find this in 13 languages, showing a robust social pathway for making language learning easier to do 2/9