Speech as reinforcing stimulation for infants.

32 5-15 wk old infants were exposed to 1 of 4 experimental conditions that involved (a) the presentation of natural speech stimuli contingent on the infants' nonnutritive sucking, (b) the withdrawal of speech stimuli contingent on the infants' nonnutritive sucking, (c) the noncontingent presentation of speech stimuli, and (d) no speech stimuli. Only the presentation of speech stimulation contingent on the infants' nonnutritive sucking resulted in a significant change in the rate of such sucking compared to infants receiving no sound stimulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)