Garlic! Who is my treasure? You little thing! … It would seem that when we address a baby or a young child, we are prey to a temporary alteration of judgment, even if it is not our child. Why do we yell and sing the words at them? Well, according to the highest authority on the subject, the American psychologist Anne Fernald, from Stanford University (United States), responds to an innate impulse necessary for the affective and cognitive development of humans with less than three years.
Fernald calls child-friendly language – IDS – for this way of expressing himself: louder volume, great variation in keys, short sentences, repetitions and exaggerated pauses. You could say that the lyrics are not as important as the music; in fact, tender interlocutors have been shown to be more receptive to IDS than gestures.
When we want to warn them, we abruptly break the syllables: “es-ta-te-quie-to”, we say to them; to praise them, we raise the tone: “Muyy bien!”; if they need comfort, we use the low frequencies and lengthen the sounds : “Ohhh, poor thing!” …
According to studies, it is more effective than the spoken language of adults and practically universal. Babies have even been shown experimentally to respond to this mode of expression while asleep : the central area of their brains is activated.
There are some exceptions, such as that of the Japanese, who hardly change their register when addressing their infants; perhaps it is because they are less culturally inclined to express their emotions. It has also been observed that depressed parents use the language adapted to children less.
