According to a new study, infants respond preferentially to mother's voice and mothers are more likely to respond to the vocal cues of their infants as compared to their fathers.

Also, it was found that mothers are more likely to vocalize back and forth with female babies.

Dr. Betty R.Vohr at the Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island was the senior author of the study.

She said that early conversations start in infancy and infants appear primed to communicate shortly after their birth. Both the parents can play a major role in the developmental progress of their infant.

33 infants born to two-parent households were a part of this study. For 10 to 16 hours the babies wore speech-activated recording devices in customized vests in the hospital at birth.

They wore it again when they turned one month old and again at the age of seven months.

The recording s were then analysed for infant vocalizations, adult word count and conversational exchanges.

Infants were exposed to more speech from females at each time point, the researchers found. Also, female adults responded more frequently to the infant vocalizations.

Adult females spoke 1,263 words per hour to new-borns while male adults spoke 462 words, on the recordings.

The researchers found that mothers respond more to baby girl vocalization at birth as well as the age of one month.

According to a previous study (of preterm infants) by Vohr and her team, the more the father and mother talked and had conversation turns with their baby in neonatal intensive care unit, the higher would be the cognitive and language skills of the child at 18 months of age, Vohr noted.

According to Fausto Sterling, the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor at Brown University, there has been a long-standing view, at least within standard psychological literature, that girls develop langue skills quicker than boys.

She said that some researchers are of the view that this difference in language development is innate but the new study suggests that infant girls may be treated differently by adults than infant boys at a very young age. This may help in explaining the difference.

She added that not many have looked at children at this age and whether the input that is being received by them has a gender imbalance.

Vohr concluded that both the parents as well as all those who look after a child must know the importance of singing, talking and playing with their baby.