Recent Publications: 
  • Elmlinger, S., Carouso-Peck, S., Albert, R.R., Wilk, A., & Goldstein, M. (2026). The social origins of vocal sequences in songbirds and human infants. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 381, 20240366. doi:https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0366. Download paper

  • Albert, R.R., Sweller, N., & Degotardi, S. (2025). Beyond the dyad: Infant vocal cues organize conversational-turn taking in infant-toddler classrooms. Infancy, 30(4), e70042 https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.70042. 
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    •  How do conversations between infants and educators unfold in classroom environments? In a study of 16-month-old infants in Australian childcare classrooms, we found that infants actively shape their conversations with educators by vocalizing in ways that capture educators' attention and stimulate engagement.  Directed vocalizations (educator‐directed, object‐directed) were more likely to receive a response than undirected vocalizations, and more speech‐like vocalizations received higher response rates than immature vocalizations. Even in busy classroom environments, infants can change their likelihood of engaging in a conversation by where they look and how they babble! We also examined how much of the speech that infants hear right after they babble is overheard versus directed at them. Despite the presence of multiple interaction partners, most contingent speech following infant vocalizations was aligned with infant attention and actions. Furthermore, group size (i.e., the number of infants in proximity) did not predict the length of conversations. Educators were skilled at facilitating sensitively aligned and multi‐turn conversations despite frequent interactions with clusters of infants.

  • Vallotton, C. D. & Albert, R.R. (2024). Infants’ contributions to prelinguistic conversations drive language learning. In J. D. Osofsky, H. E. Fitzgerald, M. Keren & K. Puura (eds).  WAIMH Handbook of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health. Springer, Cham. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-48627-2_5. Download Chapter

  • Zhang, V., Elmlinger, S., Albert, R. R., & Goldstein, M. H. (2024). Caregiver reactions to babbling organize turn-taking interactions: Facilitative effects of vocal versus non-vocal responses. Infancy, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.1259
 
  • Albert, R. R., Ernst, M., & Vallotton, C. D. (2023). Infant vocalizations elicit simplified speech in childcare. Infancy, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/ infa.12520 .  Download paper
    • Infants use their vocalizations to actively shape their learning environments in multiple social settings- including childcare classrooms!  Previous work has shown that mothers simplify their speech in response to babbles, which helps infants learn language more easily. The results of this paper demonstrate that childcare teachers simplify their speech when responding to baby babbles. Infants heard shorter, simpler, and less unique speech from their teachers after babbling. Just like in mother-infant conversations, teachers provide simpler more learnable information at moments infants are more receptive to learning. This ‘simplification effect’ finding is important to consider when designing educational opportunities to support language development in childcare settings. Our results suggest that encouraging more talk in classrooms isn’t the primary goal. Rather, teachers should be encouraged engage in conversations to create speech that is sensitive, simplified, and appropriately timed.  
 
  • Albert, R. R. (2021). Teacher talk: Infant vocal cues affect non-lead infant teachers’ responding. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 55, 326-335. https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cSI-39HNKaTLS. Download Paper
    • Infant vocalizations attract parents’ attention and prompt them to respond in ways that are helpful for facilitating language development. But, many infants spend extensive time in childcare settings in non-parental care. This study investigated whether assistant teachers show similar response tendencies as mothers when responding to infant vocalizations.  Just like mothers, we found that childcare teachers also pay attention to where babies are looking when they babble. Teachers are more likely to respond to infants after they babble at objects than when they vocalize undirected. Further, teachers provide more sensitive responses, such as descriptions and questions when babies babble at objects. This means that infants can change their opportunities for learning based on where they look when vocalizing!
      However, unlike mothers, the teachers in this study were not influenced by the speech-like quality of the babble. Teachers were equally likely to respond to immature and mature babbles and did not change what they said to different types of infant vocalizations. While the teachers could perceive differences in vocalization types, they did not use that information when deciding if and how to respond. Babies seem to benefit from responses that are selective to their more advanced vocalizations so the teachers’ lack of selective responding suggests that infants may receive different opportunities to learn in childcare settings. These results can inform professional development opportunities for non-lead infant teachers to avoid overly simplistic messages that encourage educators to simply talk more, but also promote responsiveness that is both selective and contingent upon infant behavior.