Social and endogenous motivations in the emergence of canonical babbling in infants at low and high risk for autism

There is a growing body of research emphasizing the role of social and endogenous motivations in human development. The present study evaluated canonical babbling across the second-half year of life using all-day recordings of 98 children with typical or elevated likelihoods of autism i.e., at “low risk” or “high risk”, respectively. Canonical babbling ratios (CBRs) were calculated from human coding along with Likert-scale ratings on vocal turn taking and vocal play in each segment. We observed no main effect of risk on CBRs. CBRs were significantly elevated during high vocal play. High turn taking yielded a weaker significant effect. We conclude that both social and endogenous motivations may drive infants’ tendencies to produce their most advanced vocal forms.