Infants Attend Longer to Controlling versus Supportive Directive Speech

Directive communications play a critical role in infants’ and young children’s daily routines as they are regularly guided by close others. An extensive literature describes two ways of directing action, autonomy support and control. These motivational qualities are thought to be especially important to development since they shape well-being, learning, and exploration. The way in which such motivations are communicated through tone of voice may be especially important for preverbal infants, who respond to tone more than words. At present, there is little understanding of what role these motivational qualities expressed through tone of voice play in directive speech. To fill this gap in our understanding, we conducted an experiment with 39 infants ranging in age from 9-12 months. Infants were presented with validated directive phrases previously recorded by current day-care staff members in autonomy-supportive and controlling tones. Results showed infants attended longer to controlling tones than to autonomy-supportive ones, evidencing their ability to discriminate between motivational qualities at this early age. Implications for early learning and well-being are discussed.