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Babble hypothesis shows key factor to becoming a leader

Credit: Adobe Stock / saksit.

• A new study proposes the “babble hypothesis” of becoming a group leader.
• Researchers show that intelligence is not the most important factor in leadership.
• Those who talk the most tend to emerge as group leaders.

If you want to become a leader, start yammering. It doesn’t even necessarily matter what you say. New research shows that groups without a leader can find one if somebody starts talking a lot.

This phenomenon, described by the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, depends neither on group member intelligence nor personality. Leaders emerge based on the quantity of speaking, not quality.

Researcher Neil G. MacLaren, lead author of the study published in The Leadership Quarterly , believes his team’s work may improve how groups are organized and how individuals within them are trained and evaluated.

“It turns out that early attempts to assess leadership quality were found to be highly confounded with a simple quantity: the amount of time that group members spoke during a discussion,” shared MacLaren, who is a research fellow at Binghamton University.

While we tend to think of leaders as people who share important ideas, leadership may boil down to whoever “babbles” the most. Understanding the connection between how much people speak and how they become perceived as leaders is key to growing our knowledge of group dynamics.

The power of babble

The research involved 256 college students, divided into 33 groups of four to ten people each. They were asked to collaborate on either a military computer simulation game ( BCT Commander ) or a business-oriented game ( CleanStart ). The players had ten minutes to plan how they would carry out a task and 60 minutes to accomplish it as a group. One person in the group was randomly designated as the “operator,” whose job was to control the user interface of the game.

To determine who became the leader of each group, the researchers asked the participants both before and after the game to nominate one to five people for this distinction. The scientists found that those who talked more were also more likely to be nominated. This remained true after controlling for a number of variables, such as previous knowledge of the game, various personality traits, or intelligence.

In an interview with PsyPost , MacLaren shared that “the evidence does seem consistent that people who speak more are more likely to be viewed as leaders.”

Another find was that gender bias seemed to have a strong effect on who was considered a leader. “In our data, men receive on average an extra vote just for being a man,” explained MacLaren. “The effect is more extreme for the individual with the most votes.”

Brain Lenses

Babble hypothesis.

A piece of  research  published in  The Leadership Quarterly  back in 2020 suggests that there's a "large, positive correlation between speaking time and leader emergence” found in existing research.

This correlation—being a correlation—does not authoritatively say that if you speak more, you'll automatically be perceived as, and perhaps even promoted as, leadership material.

But it does say there's reason to believe this might be the case, though there's also plenty of reason to be skeptical of what's become known as the Babble Hypothesis, because of how earlier studies were conducted (not terribly well).

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Brain Lenses to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Those who talk the most, become leaders

Mads nordmo arnestad.

If you want to become a leader, you must speak up often and talk at length. The quality of what you say is less important. The path to leadership is paved with a lot of blah, blah, blah.

A recent study from the University of New York demonstrates that those who speak the most in a group usually end up as leaders. Researchers thus found support for the so-called “babble hypothesis” in leadership. 

In the study, researchers found that the quantity of words used had a strong effect on leader selection, even after controlling for gender, age, intelligence, and personality. The quality of the words has little to no effect. It turns out that the path to leadership is indeed through a lot of blah, blah, blah.

This finding has several immediate implications and can explain many observations about the work life in our time.

The first implication is that if you want to become a leader yourself, you must speak up. What you say doesn’t have to be very smart, but you must open your mouth and share your thoughts, often and at length. This way, you signal that you have confidence in yourself and your ideas.

The equally valid implication is that if you are involved in selecting leaders, you must try to reduce this effect. Speaking up frequently does not necessarily indicate that someone cares, it can also be symptomatic of confident individuals who love to hear their own voices, don’t recognize the limits of their knowledge, and don’t bother listening to others. These are not good leadership qualities.  

Leaders prefer physical presence

Another observation that can be explained by this finding is the significant difference between leaders and employees regarding their preference on remote work vs. physical presence. Several studies show that leaders prefer physical presence much more than non-leaders. For example, one of these studies found that 75 percent of leaders wanted a general attendance requirement of three days a week or more, while only 34 percent of employees wanted the same. 

Leaders value the important information shared in all the informal workplace conversations. They see value in all that talk. This might not be surprising since they are the ones doing most of the talking. Employees, who are often quieter at work, may not always perceive this chit-chat as productive or helpful. 

Leaders like meetings

Another observation that this finding can help explain is that leaders like meetings much more than many employees do. In an attempt to explain why software developers hate meetings, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Paul Graham makes a famous distinction between “manager’s schedules” and “maker’s schedules”. 

Managers and administrators often have days segmented into many short meetings and tasks. This is because managers often have many small problems to solve throughout the day. When managers attend these meetings, they talk a lot and feel efficient and productive. For makers, it might seem like managers are just sitting and talking, but according to them, they are “proactive agents of change, helping members of the organization with sense-making, uncertainty tolerance, and opportunity mindset.”

Makers prefer a different schedule. Developers, engineers, writers, and many other professionals rely on long, uninterrupted work sessions. This is because they are tackling a big problem, not many small ones. You can’t write a book or code new software an hour here and there; you need continuous time for uninterrupted thinking and development. Therefore, makers hate having to attend even just a few meetings during the day; it distracts them from the work they are trying to do. 

Organizations depend on communication and coordination, but they also depend on makers trying to solve significant problems. However, the modern organizational schedule is completely dominated by managers’ preferences. 

The manager’s schedule holds all the power and overrides the maker’s desire for freedom from small meetings with a lot of manager talk. This power could be distributed more evenly to allow makers to protect some of their time and shield themselves from too much manager talk. 

This article was first published on DN.no 

Published 29. November 2023

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New study finds people who speak more are more likely to be viewed as leaders

(Image by Joseph Mucira from Pixabay )

Those who spend more time speaking tend to emerge as the leaders of initially leaderless groups, according to new research published in The Leadership Quarterly . This effect, known as the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, appears to occur regardless of the intelligence or personality traits of group members.

“It’s something of a truism to say that humans are intensely social, and much that is economically and politically important is done in groups, yet it seems relatively easy to demonstrate inefficiencies of all kinds associated with group work,” said lead author Neil G. MacLaren , a research fellow at the Bernard M. and Ruth R. Bass Center for Leadership Studies.

“This conflict seems surprising, and I think that understanding it better may lead to improvements in how we put work groups together, how we organize them hierarchically (or not), and how we assess and train groups and the individuals in them. It turns out that early attempts to assess leadership quality were found to be highly confounded with a simple quantity: the amount of time that group members spoke during a discussion.”

“We usually think of leadership as being very content driven — someone says important things, so we follow them — yet here was pretty consistent evidence that people seemed to attribute leadership to people who ‘babbled,’ or just spoke a lot. Trying to understand this relationship between speaking time and attributions of leadership seemed like an important step in understanding group dynamics more generally,” MacLaren explained.

The researchers recorded 33 groups of 4-10 college students as they worked together during a military- or business-themed computer simulation. The military-themed simulation was a game called BCT Commander , while the business-themed simulation was a game called CleanStart .

The participants were given 10 minutes to plan how they would complete their task and 60 minutes to attempt their task as a group. One participant in each group was randomly assigned as the “operator,” who was responsible for manipulating the game’s user interface.

Once after the planning phase of the simulation and once after the gameplay phase, the participants were asked to nominate one to five individuals who they believed had emerged as leaders.

MacLaren and his colleagues found that students who spent more time speaking were more likely to be nominated as leaders. This was true even after accounting for operator status, previous gameplay knowledge, and psychological variables such as personality traits and cognitive ability.

“I think one take away is the importance of speaking up in group settings. For example, if you are in a leadership position the evidence suggests you should play an active role in the conversation. Taking this finding to extremes is unhelpful because skewed amounts of speaking time are associated with poorer group performance outcomes ( see the work from Anita Woolley’s group on what they call collective intelligence), but the evidence does seem consistent that people who speak more are more likely to be viewed as leaders,” MacLaren told PsyPost.

The groups in the study contained a mix of both male and female students. The researchers found that gender had a substantial impact on leadership emergence.

“There is another take away that is an important corollary we address in the paper: the gender bias in leadership attributions. In our data, men receive on average an extra vote just for being a man. The effect is more extreme for the individual with the most votes,” MacLaren explained.

“This bias does not appear to be strongly associated with any observable indicators of participation quality, just with gender. Although the information about leadership attributions we gather in the lab can seem somewhat contrived, it’s important to remember that many of us provide attributions of others regularly in the form of performance evaluations at work or in hiring decisions. To me, evidence like that presented in our paper should motivate us to find better, more objective ways to determine performance quality and potential.”

The 256 participants included in the study were cognitively and demographically diverse, and included both undergraduate and graduate students. But as with all research, the study includes some caveats.

“First, in our study we follow the literature in using fellow group member attributions of leadership as the gold standard for identifying leadership status within the group. It turns out that few studies have attempted to look at these kinds of variable relationships in groups where the expected status relationships are ‘known’ through other means, such as formal position within an organization,” MacLaren said.

“Studies that have attempted this have more inconsistent findings than the laboratory-based literature. I think a lot of work still needs to be done to understand why this discrepancy exists.”

“Second, and related to the first caveat, speaking time is statistically ‘powerful’ in that it seems to relate to many important behavioral variables, eclipsing their effects in many studies. But is it the duration of speaking itself that’s important, or is it important because it’s correlated with other, more important behaviors?” MacLaren continued.

“We are working on a study right now that looks at conversational interruptions in this light, but there are many other potential behaviors (such as posture or body language) or features of speech (such as change in the pitch of an individual’s voice) that may be important. Alternately, perhaps we haven’t determined the best way to quantify the semantic content of speech in an appropriate way (i.e., a way that is minimally influenced by observer bias).”

The study, “ Testing the babble hypothesis: Speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups “, was authored by Neil G. MacLarena, Francis J. Yammarino, Shelley D. Dionne, Hiroki Sayama, Michael D. Mumford, Shane Connelly, Robert W. Martin, Tyler J. Mulhearn, E. Michelle Todd, Ankita Kulkarni, Yiding Cao, and Gregory A. Ruark.

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April 4, 2022

The babble hypothesis: quantity vs quality.

What is the babble hypothesis, and why should it matter to pharma?

If you were to examine your social circle, you could probably identify a few individuals who tend to dominate conversations and don’t hold back when sharing their opinions. Alongside this louder, more extroverted faction, you’ll also have friends who take up less space in conversations and are less eager to share their views – but are no less intelligent, engaging, or insightful for their quieter personas.

In a social context, these different groups help to bring variety to our lives. But different personality types can present certain difficulties in the more professional confines of an advisory board, speaker bureau, or even an internal team. How can you ensure that every voice is heard and every opinion considered when some individuals are more reluctant to speak

Reduce bias and influence in your ad boards so you can hear every voice.

Examining the babble hypothesis

A recent study by Neil G. MacLaren et al – Testing the babble hypothesis: speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups – set out to determine whether there was any correlation between how often people speak, and how they’re viewed by their peers.

The crux of the ‘babble hypothesis’ is simple: we pay more attention to the people who talk the most. This theory posits that though we may think people become leaders due to their keen insights and indisputable acumen, we actually tend to promote people based on the quantity of their verbal output – not the quality of what they say. Try as we might, we tend to lend extra credence to the loudest voices. The work of MacLaren and his colleagues shows there’s more to the babble hypothesis than you might think.

“We usually think of leadership as being very content-driven – someone says important things, so we follow them – yet here was pretty consistent evidence that people seemed to attribute leadership to people who ‘babbled,’ or just spoke a lot.” – Neil G. MacLaren

You can probably think of numerous examples from your professional life, your personal life, and of course the political sphere where individuals have attained elevated positions seemingly by adopting the loudest, brashest personalities. Fascinatingly, Maclaren’s research seems to bear this out.

“The evidence does seem consistent that people who speak more are more likely to be viewed as leaders.” – Neil G. MacLaren

Babble and bias

The work of MacLaren et al shows that, as a society, we tend to provide a bigger platform for those with the loudest voices. These findings have implications for global politics, for the workplace, and for our social lives – and it’s worth examining the impact this phenomenon could be having on life science, too.

When you run a virtual or in-person meeting – whether it’s an advisory group, a steering committee, a sounding board, or a clinical trial – it’s crucial that you capture the full spectrum of thoughts and opinions from every advisor if your insights are to be fully representative. But not everyone is a confident public speaker, and some people would rather stay quiet than share their opinions. If only a small percentage of advisors are fully contributing to your session, you’d have to expect an element of bias in your session results.

And it’s not just personality types that determine whether people hold their tongues or not. Hierarchy influence is huge in many life science organizations, where seniority and experience often hold significant cachet. Advisors who might have important insights to share can be reluctant to speak in the presence of more senior colleagues.

“Hierarchical leadership can have detrimental effects on health care outcomes, and alternatives must be explored.” – National Center for Biotechnology Information

There are countless other factors at play when it comes to advisor contributions, too. If you’re convening an international panel, the language barrier can be an issue. There are sensitivities that can prevent people from speaking up – or from sharing their candid, unvarnished views. In a real-time session, you might simply run out of time before you hear what every individual has to say.

Making every voice heard

A virtual engagement platform can help ensure that every advisor has their say, providing the insights you need to meet your session objectives. Connecting asynchronously allows you to make sessions anonymous, so advisors and responses can be completely anonymized. This eliminates the ‘babble’ effect, prevents hierarchy influence, and allows advisors to discuss sensitive topics with complete confidentiality openly. In-platform translation functionality allows advisors to engage in their own language, so no one is left out of the discussion. And by running an over-time session, you’re allowing participants to respond to their own schedules, wherever they are in the world – ensuring everyone can make their voice heard.

Every session you run should represent the range of advisors involved – not only to ensure you capture the full range of insights on offer but to open up the floor to a diverse range of voices rather than the same handful of extroverted speakers.

Curious about the impact of hearing every voice? Read our post about increased diversity in clinical trials.

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Testing the babble hypothesis: Speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups

• The Leadership Quarterly 31(5):101409
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Management and Accounting Faculty Scholarship

Testing the Babble Hypothesis: Speaking Time Predicts Leader Emergence in Small Groups

Neil G. MacLaren , Binghamton University--SUNY Follow Francis J. Yammarino , Binghamton University--SUNY Shelley D. Dionne , Binghamton University--SUNY Hiroki Sayama , Binghamton University--SUNY Michael D. Mumford , University of Oklahoma Shane Connelly , University of Oklahoma Robert W. Martin , University of Oklahoma Tyler J. Mulhearn , Neurostat Analytical Solutions, LLC E Michelle Todd , University of Oklahoma Ankita Kulkarni , Drexel University Yiding Cao , Binghamton University--SUNY Gregory A. Ruark , United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8478-8530

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Publication date.

leader emergence, speaking time, babble hypothesis, individual differences

The large, positive correlation between speaking time and leader emergence is well-established. As such, some authors have argued for a ``babble hypothesis'' of leadership, suggesting that only the quantity of speaking, not its quality, determines leader emergence. However, previous tests of this notion may have been problematic. Some studies have asserted a causal effect of speaking time on leader emergence based on experimental studies, but have limited participant communication, access to reliable information, or both. Other studies have used more ecologically valid designs, but have not always controlled for relevant participant traits or roles, suggesting potential endogeneity effects. Testing the babble hypothesis thus requires a study that is both ecologically valid and supports strong inference. The current study fills that gap and finds that speaking time retains its direct effect on leader emergence when accounting for intelligence, personality, gender, and the endogeneity of speaking time.

The research described herein was sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of the Army (Grant No. W911NF-17-1-0221). The views expressed in this archive are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, DOD, or the U.S. Government.

Data Updated July 21, 2020

Publisher Attribution

Final version published by Elsevier's Science Direct and can be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101409

Recommended Citation

MacLaren, Neil G.; Yammarino, Francis J.; Dionne, Shelley D.; Sayama, Hiroki; Mumford, Michael D.; Connelly, Shane; Martin, Robert W.; Mulhearn, Tyler J.; Todd, E Michelle; Kulkarni, Ankita; Cao, Yiding; and Ruark, Gregory A., "Testing the Babble Hypothesis: Speaking Time Predicts Leader Emergence in Small Groups" (2020). Management and Accounting Faculty Scholarship . 2. https://orb.binghamton.edu/management_fac/2

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Babbling is a stage in child development and a state in language acquisition during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering articulate sounds, but does not yet produce any recognizable words. Babbling begins shortly after birth and progresses through several stages as the infant's repertoire of sounds expands and vocalizations become more speech-like. Infants typically begin to produce recognizable words when they are around 12 months of age, though babbling may continue for some time afterward. Babbling can be seen as a precursor to language development or simply as vocal experimentation. The physical structures involved in babbling are still being developed in the first year of a child's life. This continued physical development is responsible for some of the changes in abilities and variations of sound babies can produce. Abnormal developments such as certain medical conditions, developmental delays, and hearing impairments may interfere with a child's ability to babble normally. Though there is still disagreement about the uniqueness of language to humans, babbling is not unique to the human species.

1. Typical Development

Babbling is a stage in language acquisition. Babbles are separated from language because they do not convey meaning or refer to anything specific like words do. Human infants are not necessarily excited or upset when babbling, they may also babble spontaneously and incessantly when they are emotionally calm.

The sounds of babbling are produced before an infant begins to construct recognizable words. [ 1 ] This can be partly attributed to the immaturity of the vocal tract and neuromusculature at this age in life. [ 2 ] Infants first begin vocalizing by crying, followed by cooing and then vocal play. These first forms of sound production are the easiest for children to use because they contain natural, reflexive, mostly vowel sounds.

Babbling is assumed to occur in all children acquiring language. [ 3 ] Particularly it has been studied in English, [ 4 ] Italian, [ 5 ] [ 6 ] Korean, [ 7 ] French, [ 8 ] Spanish, [ 6 ] Japanese [ 8 ] and Swedish. [ 8 ] Infants across the world follow general trends in babbling tendencies. Differences that do appear are the result of the infants' sensitivity to the characteristics of the language(s) they are exposed to. Infants mimick the prosody of the language(s) they are exposed to. They use intonation patterns and timing that matches the characteristics of their parent language. [ 2 ] Infants also babble using the consonants and vowels that occur most frequently in their parent language. Most babbling consists of a small number of sounds, which suggests the child is preparing the basic sounds necessary to speak the language to which it is exposed.

The consonants that babbling infants produce tend to be any of the following : /p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, s, h, w, j/ . The following consonants tend to be infrequently produced during phonological development : /f, v, θ, ð, ʃ, tʃ, dʒ, l, r, ŋ/ . The complexity of the sounds that infants produce makes them difficult to categorize, but the above rules tend to hold true regardless of the language to which children are exposed. [ 9 ]

If babbling occurs during the first year of life, it can typically be concluded that the child is developing speech normally. As the baby grows and changes, his/her vocalizations change as well.

1.1. Timeline of Typical Vocal Development

Infants follow a general timeline of vocal developments in childhood. [ 10 ] This timeline provides a general outline of expected developments from birth to age one. Babbling usually lasts 6–9 months in total. [ 3 ] The babbling period ends at around 12 months because it is the age when first words usually occur. However, individual children can show large variability and this timeline is only a guideline.

From birth to 1 month , babies produce mainly pleasure sounds, cries for assistance, and responses to the human voice. [ 10 ]

Around 2 months , babies can distinguish between different speech sounds, and can make “goo”ing sounds [ 10 ]

Around 3 months , babies begin (making elongated vowel sounds "oooo" "aaaa"), and will respond vocally to speech of others. They continue to make predominantly vowel sounds. [ 10 ]

Around 4 months , babies may vary their pitch, and imitate tones in adult speech. [ 10 ]

Around 5 months , babies continue to experiment with sound, imitating some sounds made by adults. [ 10 ]

Around 6 months , babies vary volume, pitch and rate. When infants are 6 months old they are finally able to control the opening and closing of the vocal tract, and upon obtaining this ability, infants begin to distinguish between the different sounds of vowels and consonants. This age is often distinguished as the beginning of the canonical stage. During the canonical stage, the babbling involves reduplicated sounds containing alternations of vowels and consonants, for example, "baba" or "bobo". [ 10 ] Reduplicated babbling (also known as canonical babbling) consists of repeated syllables consisting of consonant and a vowel such as "da da da da" or "ma ma ma ma". [ 11 ]

Around 7 months , babies can produce several sounds in one breath, they also recognize different tones and inflections in other speakers. [ 10 ]

Around 8 months , babies can repeat emphasized syllables. [ 10 ] They imitate gestures and tonal quality of adult speech. They also produce variegated babbling. Variegated babbles contain mixes of consonant vowel combinations such as "ka da by ba mi doy doy". [ 12 ] Variegated babbling differs from reduplicated babbling in terms of the variation and complexity of syllables that are produced. [ 2 ]

Around 9-10 months , babies can imitate non speech sounds, and speech-like sounds if they are in the child's repertoire of sounds. [ 10 ] Infant babbling begins to resemble the native language of a child. The final stage is known as conversational babbling, or the "jargon stage". Usually occurring by about ten months of age, the jargon stage is defined as "pre-linguistic vocalizations in which infants use adult-like stress and intonation". [ 13 ] The general structure of the syllables that they are producing is very closely related to the sounds of their native language and this form of babbling significantly predicts the form of early words. [ 14 ]

Around 11 months , babies imitate inflections, rhythms, and expressions of speakers. [ 10 ]

By 12 months , babies typically can speak one or more words. These words now refer to the entity which they name; they are used to gain attention or for a specific purpose. [ 10 ] Children continue to produce jargon babbles beyond their first words.

1.2. Manual Babbling

Manual babbling is structurally identical to vocal babbling in its development. [ 15 ] Just as hearing and/or speaking infants babble with their mouths, infants who grow up with a sign language babble with their hands. [ 15 ] If a hearing infant has deaf and/or mute parents or parents who otherwise use a sign language, he or she will still imitate the signs that they see their parents displaying. This is evidence that manual babbling is possible in both hearing and deaf infants, and in both speaking and mute infants. [ 15 ]

All babies imitate with their hands the movements that they see. Typical gestures for example are raising arms to be lifted up, or grabbing/reaching to indicate wanting a bottle; these are used referentially. [ 16 ] In addition, infants who grow up with a sign language begin to make gestures that are distinct from all other hand movements and gestures.

After it was established that infants could babble with their hands and their mouths, the patterns in which productions occurred were studied. Speaking and signing infants follow very similar maturational paths in language acquisition. [ 14 ] Both go through a number of stages, and exhibit similar complexity in their babbling sequences. In studies where deaf and hearing children were compared, children learning sign language produced more multi-movement manual babbling than children who were not learning a sign language. [ 14 ] There are three main components of manual babbling. The hand gestures contain a restricted set of phonetic units, show a syllabic organization, and are used without reference or meaning. This is comparable to aspects of vocal babbling as mentioned above. [ 15 ] It is difficult to study manual babbling as often the manual activity can be mistaken as gestures rather than signs. When signing children are in fact babbling it will most often take place in front of their torso in a designated area that is called the phonetic space. [ 16 ] One of the most common forms of manual babbling is the extension and spreading of all fingers. This babble is also one of the first indicators that an infant will begin to make in manual communication. [ 14 ]

Children are able to produce signs correctly, which is important since many articulation tendencies of manual babbling transfer to the children’s early sign production. [ 14 ] Children acquire signs for the same concepts as speaking children's words, and in the same stage of development. [ 14 ]

2. Transition from Babbling to Language

Two hypotheses have been devised in order to explain how babbling is related to language development. [ 3 ]

• The Discontinuity Hypothesis - This early hypothesis suggests that babbling has absolutely no relationship to language development. [ 3 ] If true, infants would produce a full range of random sounds in no particular order during the babbling stage. However, it has been demonstrated that early babbling is quite limited. [ 3 ] Supporters of this hypothesis also thought that children might drop certain sounds only to pick them up again in later months. Supporters proposed it would be possible for babies to incorrectly and inconsistently use sounds that they had already mastered in the early babbling stages later in life or even lose sounds altogether before learning how to speak. The hypothesis also implies that when children finally reach the age where they are able to learn their native language, they develop phonological sounds in an orderly manner. Over time, infants will relearn sounds and develop words in a specific language. Current evidence does not support these claims. [ 3 ]

Contemporary research supports the notion that babbling is directly related to the development of language as discussed in The Continuity Hypothesis.

• The Continuity Hypothesis - According to this hypothesis, babbling is a direct forerunner to language. At first, infants produce universal sounds that exist in all areas of the world and in all languages. Reduplicated canonical babbling [ 17 ] produces a number of sounds but only some of them ("ma ma" and "da da", turning into "mommy" and "daddy", respectively) are recognized as meaningful and thus reinforced by caregivers and parents, while the others are abandoned as meaningless (this is the argument in, for instance, Susanne Langer's Philosophy in a New Key ). [ 18 ] This hypothesis agrees with the claim that the anatomical changes of the vocal tract are very important, but suggests that the social environment in which an infant is raised has a greater influence on the development of language. Infants pay close attention to their caregivers' reactions and use their feedback as approval for the sounds that they are making. This reinforcement through feedback helps infants to focus their attention on specific features of sound. Social feedback facilitates faster learning and earlier production of a variety of advanced words. [ 19 ] There is evidence that babbling varies depending on the linguistic environment in which a baby is raised. Current babbling research supports The Continuity Hypothesis. For example, it has been noted that infants raised in French speaking environments display greater amounts of rising intonation in comparison to infants raised in English speaking environments. This is likely due to the differences between French and English intonations while speaking. The ordering of consonants and vowels in the babbling of English, French, Swedish and Japanese infants also appears to resemble that of their native language. These findings support another hypothesis, the “babbling drift hypothesis” in which infant babbling resembles the phonetic characteristics of a child's native language through exposure to speech. When babies are exposed to two languages, their babbles resemble the language that they are most exposed to. The dominant language is considered to be the one that children have the most exposure to. Most often infants do not produce a blend of language styles while babbling however, may switch between languages. Sometimes infants may choose which language style they prefer to babble in based upon particular features. [ 20 ] The babbling drift hypothesis provides further support for The Continuity Hypothesis.

3. Physiology

The human mouth moves in distinct ways during speech production. When producing each individual sound out loud, humans use different parts of their mouths, as well as different methods to produce particular sounds. During the beginnings of babbling, infants tend to have greater mouth openings on the right side. This finding suggests that babbling is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain. [ 21 ] The larynx, or voicebox, is originally high in the throat which allows the baby to continue to breathe while swallowing. It descends during the first year of life, allowing the pharynx to develop and facilitates the production of adult-like speech sounds. [ 22 ]

Reduplicated babbling (such as bababa) involves a rhythmic opening and closing of the jaw. [ 23 ] According to the Frame Dominance Theory, when the mandible (jaw) is elevated, a consonant sound will be produced. When the mandible is lowered, a vowel-like sound is produced. Therefore, during a reduplicated sequence of sounds, the consonant and vowels are alternated as the mandible elevates and depresses. The opening and closing of the mouth alone will not produce babbling, and phonation (or voicing) is necessary during the movement in order to create a meaningful sound. Other important oral structures involved in articulation, such as the tongue, lips and teeth remain in a stable resting position during babbling. [ 24 ] Sometimes during the babbling period, the motions can be made without any vocalization at all. [ 14 ] Signing infants produce manual babbling through similar rhythmic alternations, but they perform with their hands instead of their mouths. As a baby goes beyond the reduplicated sequences of babbling, they exhibit equal sized mouth or hand openings on the right and left sides. [ 15 ]

4. Abnormal Development

Typically by 6 months of age, all normally developing children will babble. [ 25 ] However, infants with certain medical conditions or developmental delays may exhibit a delay or an absence of babbling. For example, infants who have had a tracheotomy typically do not babble because they are unable to phonate. [ 26 ] Following decannulation, it has been found that these infants do produce more vocalizations, but the sounds or syllables are not as diverse as those found in typically developing infant's canonical babbling behaviour. [ 27 ] Infants with severe apraxia may not babble, and may fail to produce first words. Communication by infants with apraxia may instead be in the form of grunting and pointing. [ 26 ] Infants with autism may show a delay in babbling, and in some cases it may be completely absent. [ 26 ] Babbling in children with autism tends to occur less frequently than in typically developing children, and with a smaller range of syllables produced during the canonical babbling stage. [ 28 ] Babbling may also be delayed in individuals who are born with Down syndrome. The canonical stage may emerge 2 months later for individuals with Down syndrome compared to other infants, although, when produced, it is similar to babbling in typically developing infants. [ 26 ]

4.1. Vocal Babbling in Deaf Infants

Research has been conducted to determine whether or not infants with impaired hearing can demonstrate typical vocal sounds. Babbling can appear at the same age and in similar forms in hearing and deaf child, however, further continuation of babbling and speech development depends upon the ability for the child to hear themselves. For this reason, deaf children stop babbling vocally earlier than hearing children. [ 29 ] Babbling should appear if the child is exposed to language, but vocal babbling can be delayed or non-existent for deaf children. [ 14 ] It is not clear whether spoken language can develop fully without auditory experience. [ 17 ] Deaf children are not only significantly delayed in spoken language development in comparison to their hearing counterparts, but they also produce fewer noises. [ 30 ] This suggests that auditory experience is necessary in spoken language development. Some researchers have taken these findings as evidence against the hypothesis that language is an innate human capability. [ 24 ]

A number of solutions have been used for hearing-impaired humans to gain auditory experience, one of which is hearing aids; they can be used to help infants reach babbling stages earlier. [ 17 ] Cochlear implants have also been tested. Once the surgical implantation is complete, an infant has the opportunity to experience spoken language input. Once language has been heard, the infant begins to babble and speak in rhythmic patterns just as hearing infants do. [ 24 ]

5. Evidence Across Species

Though there is disagreement about the uniqueness of language to humans, babbling is not unique to the human species. [ 3 ] Many animals produce similar ranges of sounds to human infants. These ranges of sounds are used in the young of many species to experiment with sound-making capabilities, or to practice for future vocal behavior. Similar to human infants, animal babbling is restricted by physiological development. [ 12 ]

5.1. Songbirds

Not only are songbird and human language parallel regarding neural and molecular factors, they also are similar in how their communication is initially produced. Observations about these similarities can be traced back to Charles Darwin and his studies. Avian and mammalian brains are similar in form and connectivity and there may even be a gene that is relevant to speech found in both organisms. The learning of a song is produced through a mix of interaction, experience, and predisposition. Young songbirds will imitate their species' call when presented with songs from their own and another species. They are physically capable of producing either song, but do not. Humans learn language through similar means, which is why this early vocalization in songbirds is considered babbling. [ 16 ]

Young male songbirds produce varieties of immature songs that are referred to as babbling because the immature songs precede those that are fully developed. As with humans, if these songs are reinforced with positive social feedback, they are more likely to recur. Since the females do not sing songs, they are in charge of providing the feedback. If females provide more social signals as feedback, males will develop more mature songs at a faster rate than other male birds. Young birds require reinforcement from adults in order to finalize their songs. Another relation to human infants is that the amount of vocalizations is not key, but rather the quality of the sounds that is retained and resembles the final produce of language. [ 31 ]

The physiology of the animal is important. The properties of the ear and vocal tract, as well as the brain regions used in analyzing and processing information are critical determinants of how song is interpreted and later produced. In studies using isolated birds that have not had exposure to song, they produce an abnormal ‘isolate song’ that nevertheless contains species-specific aspects. This shows that the neural pathways have predetermined features that allow for such a phenomenon to occur. The pathways are able to allow for plasticity of the songs that can be learned in the future. [ 16 ]

There is an important phase in development when song learning is best accomplished. This phase is called the ‘sensitive period’ and the amount of change that a songbird experiences in adulthood varies by species. Young birds have a production phase after a listening phase of development. The production of song is called ‘subsong’ where vocalizations resemble that of an adult as time passes. Memory for songs is able to form before the period where learning to sing occurs. Social interaction is important in vocal learning where non-singing females can even influence an infant through feedback. [ 16 ]

5.2. Pygmy Mmarmoset ( Cebuella pygmaea )

Pygmy marmosets have been studied and found to produce complex vocalizations 2–3 weeks after birth. Both sexes are capable of creating calls at a rate of 3 calls/second and each bout of calls can last up to 6 or 7 minutes. A normal series of calls by a pygmy marmoset contains approximately 10 different call types. This variety of call forms produced by this creature is comparable to babbling in human infants for a number of reasons. Like reduplicative babbling in humans, the call is often repeated several times before a new sequence of sounds is produced. The vocalizations gain attention from caregivers and provide practice for future vocal behavior. For these reasons, pygmy marmoset calls are seen as babbling behavior. [ 32 ]

There are a total of 16 call types in pygmy marmoset babbling language. Different calls serve different survival functions such as when desiring food, social interaction or during times of alarm. As human infants have, marmoset babies have higher rates of social interaction when producing babbling sounds. During the juvenile age, marmosets often regress back to babbling stages if a new infant is born. It is suggested that their production of babbling calls increases because they are seeking attention and social interaction. Another babbling occurrence during the juvenile age is the addition of territorial calls and mild threat vocalizations. Although babbling is important for practising adult calls during the juvenile age, babbling decreases with age in pygmy marmosets. Overall, babbling progresses through a series of stages from infancy to adulthood and slowly leads to the construction of adult calls. [ 32 ]

5.3.Sac-Winged Bat ( Saccopteryx bilineata )

Babbling-like behavior in songbirds, humans and some nonhuman primates has been previously researched, but it has not been researched until recently in non-primate mammals. The sac-winged bat ( Saccopteryx bilineata ) is a social creature and the vocalizations that it produces depend on the social situation that the animal is in. This bat has a large repertoire of vocalizations with males being more vocal than females. Echolocation pulses, barks, chatters, and screeches are used in various social situations including courtship and territorial defense. Infants produce isolation calls if their mothers are absent, but the pups also produce vocalizations that mirror those of adults. Both sexes of infants babble, even though as an adult, the vocalizations are solely produced by males. Social context, mothers, and surrounding bats do not influence pups because the multiple vocalizations are combined regardless of the situation. Since there is not a social aspect correlated with the vocalizations, the productions of the sounds suggest that the pups vocalize for training. The pups repeat and combine adult vocalizations so that they resemble babbling in what humans, other primates and some songbirds do as infants. However, while human babbling increases social interactions, there are no social responses to babbling in bats. Babbling is common in infants that have a large repertoire of adult vocalizations to learn and this is seen in the pups of sac-winged bat. [ 33 ]

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Testing the babble hypothesis: Speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

The large, positive correlation between speaking time and leader emergence is well-established. As such, some authors have argued for a “babble hypothesis” of leadership, suggesting that only the quantity of speaking, not its quality, determines leader emergence. However, previous tests of this notion may have been problematic. Some studies have asserted a causal effect of speaking time on leader emergence based on experimental studies, but have limited participant communication, access to reliable information, or both. Other studies have used more ecologically valid designs, but have not always controlled for relevant participant traits or roles, suggesting potential endogeneity effects. Testing the babble hypothesis thus requires a study that is both ecologically valid and supports strong inference. The current study fills that gap and finds that speaking time retains its direct effect on leader emergence when accounting for intelligence, personality, gender, and the endogeneity of speaking time.

• Babble hypothesis
• Individual differences
• Leader emergence
• Speaking time

ASJC Scopus subject areas

• Business and International Management
• Applied Psychology
• Sociology and Political Science
• Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

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• Small Groups Social Sciences 100%
• Leader Emergence Social Sciences 100%
• Endogeneity Psychology 100%
• Ecologically Valid Keyphrases 40%

T1 - Testing the babble hypothesis

T2 - Speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups

AU - MacLaren, Neil G.

AU - Yammarino, Francis J.

AU - Dionne, Shelley D.

AU - Sayama, Hiroki

AU - Mumford, Michael D.

AU - Connelly, Shane

AU - Martin, Robert W.

AU - Mulhearn, Tyler J.

AU - Todd, E. Michelle

AU - Kulkarni, Ankita

AU - Cao, Yiding

AU - Ruark, Gregory A.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 Elsevier Inc.

PY - 2020/10

Y1 - 2020/10

N2 - The large, positive correlation between speaking time and leader emergence is well-established. As such, some authors have argued for a “babble hypothesis” of leadership, suggesting that only the quantity of speaking, not its quality, determines leader emergence. However, previous tests of this notion may have been problematic. Some studies have asserted a causal effect of speaking time on leader emergence based on experimental studies, but have limited participant communication, access to reliable information, or both. Other studies have used more ecologically valid designs, but have not always controlled for relevant participant traits or roles, suggesting potential endogeneity effects. Testing the babble hypothesis thus requires a study that is both ecologically valid and supports strong inference. The current study fills that gap and finds that speaking time retains its direct effect on leader emergence when accounting for intelligence, personality, gender, and the endogeneity of speaking time.

AB - The large, positive correlation between speaking time and leader emergence is well-established. As such, some authors have argued for a “babble hypothesis” of leadership, suggesting that only the quantity of speaking, not its quality, determines leader emergence. However, previous tests of this notion may have been problematic. Some studies have asserted a causal effect of speaking time on leader emergence based on experimental studies, but have limited participant communication, access to reliable information, or both. Other studies have used more ecologically valid designs, but have not always controlled for relevant participant traits or roles, suggesting potential endogeneity effects. Testing the babble hypothesis thus requires a study that is both ecologically valid and supports strong inference. The current study fills that gap and finds that speaking time retains its direct effect on leader emergence when accounting for intelligence, personality, gender, and the endogeneity of speaking time.

KW - Babble hypothesis

KW - Individual differences

KW - Leader emergence

KW - Speaking time

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85081954569&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85081954569&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101409

DO - 10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101409

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85081954569

SN - 1048-9843

JO - Leadership Quarterly

JF - Leadership Quarterly

M1 - 101409