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The present study aimed at identifying the acoustic pattern of vocalizations, produced by 7- to 11-month-old infants, that were interpreted by their mothers as expressing emotions or communicative functions. Participants were 6 healthy, first-born English infants, 3 boys and 3 girls, and their mothers. The acoustic analysis of the vocalizations was performed using a pattern recognition (PR) software system. A PR system not only calculates signal features, it also automatically detects patterns in the arrangement of such features. The following results were obtained: (a) the PR system distinguished vocalizations interpreted as emotions from vocalizations interpreted as communicative functions with an overall accuracy of 87.34%; (b) the classification accuracy of the PR system for vocalizations that convey emotions was 85.4% and for vocalizations that convey communicative functions was 89.5%; and (c) compared to vocalizations that express emotions, vocalizations that express communicative functions were shorter, displayed lower fundamental frequency values, and had greater overall intensity. These findings suggest that in the second half of the first year, infants possess a vocal repertoire that contributes to regulating cooperative interaction with their mothers, which is considered one of the major prerequisites for language acquisition. KEY WORDS: infant vocalizations, pattern recognition, communication, emotions, The ability of infants, before the emergence of language, to communicate different kinds of messages through nonlinguistic aspects of voice can be investigated by examining whether vocalizations that have been [...]

A rightward bias to all forms of sidedness seems to be particularly human and perhaps characteristic of every human society. However, this phenomenon has been studied mainly in relation to lateralization of handedness and language. This study investigated the consistency of right- and nonright-handed individuals in prefer ring the same side for foot, eye, and ear using Coren's Lateral Preference Inventory. The sample of 194 students, 91 boys and 103 girls, ranging in age from 11.5-14.5 years (M age 13.2 yr.) was recruited from public junior high schools in a rural area in Greece on the island of Rhodes. Despite the dominance of the right side observed in handedness, footedness, eyedness, and earedness, this tendency was not equally strong in all four indexes of lateral preference, with handedness showing comparatively the strongest tendency and earedness showing comparatively the weakest tendency. Moreover, the strength of preference for the same side for foot, eye, and ear was significantly weaker in nonright-handed individuals compared to right handed individuals. These results agree with the hypothesis that nonright-handers may have reduced rath er than reversed asymmetry.