Cornell BABY Lab

04/09/2026

From Nest to Nursery: How Feedback Shapes Voices

Is it possible that two very different species - such as birds and humans - have something similar in how they learn to communicate? The answer is a resounding yes! According to our recent paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, both human infants' speech development and zebra finch bird song development are shaped by their social interactions—more specifically, by the social feedback they receive in response to their immature vocalizations.

In our two studies on infants, we had parents play with their infants for 15 minutes. We found that infants who produced sequences of sounds rather than singular syllables were more likely to elicit a response from their caregivers. Additionally, when caregivers responded to these infants, the infants were more likely to produce vocal sequences than singular syllable sounds. This creates a feedback loop between infants and their caregivers.

Over time, we noticed that infants who experienced higher caregiver responsiveness actually improved their language development as a result. They showed more vocal compression at 10 months and a larger vocabulary size at 18 months. This means that caregiver responsiveness is crucial in the development of children’s communication abilities.
We observed the same phenomenon in birds. In our experiment, Juvenile zebra finches who practiced their immature song and either received or did not receive contingent social feedback. Those that received contingent responses from female caregivers were the only ones to significantly develop their vocal compression, while birds that did not receive contingent responses from caregivers did not. Only the birds who received contingent responses to their vocalizations were able to produce a similar bird song as their “tutor”, meaning it was caregiver responses that predicted vocal maturity.

For more detailed methods and discussion, please feel free to read the full article linked below. To find out more fun studies like this one, follow our Instagram and Facebook to catch up on the newest research in our lab!

Abstract. From birdsong to human language, acoustic communication by vocal learners involves the concatenation of sounds into sequences. Sequences are more

03/22/2025

👶 Welcome to the B.A.B.Y. Lab! 👶We’re the Behavioral Analysis of Beginning Years Lab, and our research dives into the fascinating world of early communication and social learning. 🌱 From the very first babbles to the foundations of social interaction, we’re here to uncover how young minds grow and connect. Follow us to find out about our latest findings, research updates, and insights into the development journey of the earliest years! 🧠✨

02/21/2025

Your Brain on Babies: How Babies Turn You Into a Danger Detector

How do babies change the way we see the world? Caregivers have long known that having a baby nearby changes how we see danger. Popular products like outlet covers and "baby gates" are a testament to just how vigilant parents need to be. Research in our lab is showing that everyone—not just parents—becomes more attuned to threats when a baby is around.

In our most recent theoretical paper, we look at how caring for babies shapes how adults perceive the world, especially when it comes to detecting potential threats. Simply seeing a helpless infant is a powerful signal to stimulate changes in attention and perception in both parents and nonparents alike. Not only are babies changing what you look at in the environment, but also how your brain interprets what you're looking at! Adults perceive dangers as more formidable when there is a baby nearby. In our lab, we use virtual environments to study parenting. We recently found that parents perceive passing cars to be moving faster when there is a virtual baby nearby, compared to a robot or dog.

Our research highlights how caregiving isn’t just about protecting infants—babies are actively reshaping our perception in ways that help keep them safe! You can read more about our findings in the journal Acta Psychologica: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691825000927?via%3Dihub

You can also learn more about the other ways in which babies are shaping adults, such as how they get us to make language easier to learn, by checking out some of our other recent work at https://babylab.cornell.edu/news/

02/07/2025

How do languages become learnable for young children? Our latest study,‬ "Immature‬ vocalizations elicit simplified adult speech across multiple languages," is now out in‬ Current‬ Biology‬!‬

We’ve long known that infants and toddlers are incredible learners. Despite their immaturity, do they play an active role in their learning? We found that the answer is yes. Our new study shows that infants’ and toddlers’ early babbling and immature speech functions to facilitate caregivers’ reactions that help them learn. When caregivers respond to immature speech, they speak in simpler sentences. This “simplification effect” from caregivers‬ makes language more learnable! We found this effect in 13 different languages, including Tseltal Mayan, where engaging in face-to-face interaction with infants is rare. What such cross-cultural behavior‬ implies is that this "simplification effect” may be widespread and present in many more languages than the 13 we‬ studied.‬

We found that the timing of parents’ responses matters. Parents simplified their speech significantly more when they responded immediately (i.e. contingently) after their child’s babbling and speech. In contrast, infant-directed speech that was not contingent was not simplified.

Read more about our findings in the Cornell Chronicle: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/02/power-babble-babies-elicit-simpler-speech-adults

Current Biology article: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2824%2901720-2

08/08/2024

Our lab's latest paper, Contingency enables the formation of social expectations about an artificial agent, is out in Infancy!
We have long proposed that infants figure out who and what to learn from by tuning into people and behaviors that are contingently responsive to infants’ own actions (in this case, babbling). This would explain how social behaviors, like language, are prioritized and rapidly learned over the many other sources of stimulation in infants’ environments. We tested this by introducing infants to a remote-controlled car that we set up to verbally respond to infants, either contingently on their babbling or randomly. As an additional control, we introduced a second group of infants to an equally unfamiliar and responsive adult. We found that infants who received contingent feedback for their babbling from the robot car quickly formed strong expectations that the robot car should continue to interact with them. They showed a stronger effect with the robot car than with the unfamiliar human! This means that the timing of our interactions with babies is crucially important for their attention and learning.

Read more in the Cornell Chronicle’s recent coverage of our article (linked below)!
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/08/timely-responses-even-car-drive-babies-learning

Article in Infancy: https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12614

The timing of others’ reactions to their babbling is key to how babies begin learning, Cornell developmental psychologists found - with help from a remote-controlled car.

04/25/2019

Our research assistants will be at the Ithaca Farmer's Market on Saturdays until May! We would love to chat with you about all of the interesting studies we are conducting at the BABY Lab- feel free to stop by our poster!

01/31/2019

The latest paper from our lab is out in Current Biology! In the field of birdsong learning, most researchers focus on male singers rather than females, who in many species don't sing. Our work shows that females play a crucial role in guiding song learning. We better start paying more attention to females to understand how song learning really works. Reports about the research are in Science and the Chronicle (links below):

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/teen-zebra-finches-seek-moms-approval-their-new-tunes

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/01/psychologists-solve-mystery-songbird-learning

Female “fluff-ups” are first evidence of social learning in commonly studied songbirds

11/08/2018

Haven't had a chance to sign up? We are still looking for families in the Ithaca area with infants 8-10 months old to participate in our exciting new studies! For more information, please visit our website or email us at [email protected]! We look forward to meeting you!

10/03/2018

Check out this article published earlier this year by Rachel Albert, a B.A.B.Y. Lab Ph.D, on recent findings from a study on parental responses to infant babbling!

At around six months, infants aren't making sense yet—but they're incredibly receptive to how parents respond to their vocalizations

09/22/2018

The BABY Lab is currently looking for families with infants 8-10 months old to participate in our new studies! For more information, visit our website www.babylab.cornell.edu or email us at [email protected]