Our new theory paper, Curiosity constructs communicative competence through social feedback loops, is out in Advances in Child Development and Behavior! Humans are vocal learners, meaning we can flexibly adapt our vocalizations as a function of hearing other human’s vocalizations. We put the regularities of caregiver-infant social interactions at the forefront of our theory of vocal learning in infancy. The timing, sensitivity and developmental appropriateness of infant-directed speech makes it an informative signal for infants to pay attention to and learn from. Infants can babble and get prompt responses from their caregivers, which contain the features of their native language and of vocal turn-taking interactions. Caregiver sensitivity to their infant’s maturity, infant’s vocal and social development, and infants’ attentional preferences for learnability allow for contingent responses to serve as social feedback that infants forage for and use to learn language.