When children acquire their first language, adults speak to them differently than they would to other adults. This type of speech is formally called “baby talk,” but is also called “baby talk” and “motherese.” Child-directed speech (ID) has several properties that distinguish it from adult-directed speech (AD). There is debate as to whether or not language ID helps children acquire language or is a hindrance in their language acquisition process. Several experiments were performed to test the effect of language ID on children's language learning. All these experiments used different properties of ID speech. Overall, experiments have shown that ID language helps children acquire language better than AD language for several reasons. Further studies can be conducted on intellectual language to learn more about its effects on second language acquisition and at different ages. Basic Information on Child-Directed Speech Soderstrom (2007) found that intellectual speech is present in most spoken languages. He also found that ID language is characterized by several properties that include prosodic, phonological, and syntactic properties. The prosodic properties of ID language include a higher pitch of voice, changing the pitch of one's voice, lengthening of vowels, and lengthening of pauses between words in a sentence. Many researchers suggest that these prosodic properties attract children's attention and maintain it. Phonological properties of speech in ID include differences in distinguishing voice onset time and exaggeration of some words in a sentence. Soderstrom found differing opinions on whether or not phonological properties were actually useful in language acquisition. Syntactic properties of speech in ID include short... middle of paper... role of child-directed speech with a computer model. Acoustical Society of America, 4(4), 129-134.Cooper, R.P., & Aslin, R.N. (1990). Preference for infant-directed speech in the first month after birth. Child Development, 61(5), 1584-1595. Kaplan, P. S., Bachorowski, J., Smoski, M. J., & Hudenko, W. J. (2002). Children of depressed mothers, although competent at learning, fail to learn in response to speech directed at the child by their own mothers. Psychological Science, 13(3), 268-271. Kuhl, P. (2007). Is speech learning “fenced” from the social brain? Developmental Sciences, 10(1), 110-120. Soderstrom, M. (2007). Beyond infant language: Reevaluating the nature and content of vocal input to preverbal infants. Development Review, 27(4), 501-532. Thiessen, E. D., Hill, E. A., & Saffran, J. R. (2005). Child-directed speech facilitates word segmentation. Childhood, 7(1), 53-71.