Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We studied individual differences in broadcasters' multimodal adult-directed and child-directed communication. Forty-six female future broadcasters simulated live broadcasts for both adults and children. Effects of speakers' individual styles, empathy and the Big Five personality traits on adult-directed and child-directed language (e.g., prosody, linguistic features and gestures) were examined. Results showed that all multimodal cues in adult-directed and child-directed language were highly correlated, but there were larger individual variations in the degree of adjustments between the two language registers. Moreover, empathy and certain personality traits could not only predict multimodal language production, but also the degree of adjustments for child-directed communication. For example, higher-empathetic participants speak faster, louder with a higher pitch, use diverse but more frequent words, and produce more salient referential gestures. In conclusion, despite an individual language style, empathy and the Big Five personality traits influence speakers' multimodal language production and the degree of audience design.