A step-by-step guide to collecting and analyzing long-format speech environment (LFSE) recordings

Abstract

Recent years have seen rapid technological development of devices that can record communicative behavior as participants go about daily life. This paper is intended as an end-to-end methodological guidebook for potential users of these technologies, including researchers who want to study children's or adults' communicative behavior in everyday contexts. We explain how long-format speech environment (LFSE) recordings provide a unique view on language use and how they can be used to complement other measures at the individual and group level. We aim to help potential users of these technologies make informed decisions regarding research design, hardware, software, and archiving. We also provide information regarding ethics and implementation, issues that are difficult to navigate for those new to this technology, and on which little or no resources are available. This guidebook offers a concise summary of information for new users and points to sources of more detailed information for more advanced users. Links to discussion groups and community-augmented databases are also provided to help readers stay up-to-date on the latest developments.

Early language experience in a Papuan community

“…We used the ACLEW Annotation Scheme (Casillas, Bunce, et al, 2017) in ELAN (Wittenburg, Brugman, Russel, Klassmann & Sloetjes, 2006) to transcribe and annotate all hearable speech in the clips. Using both the audio and photo context, we segmented out the utterances and ascribed them to individual speakers (e.g., older brother, mother, aunt, etc.).…”

“…That said, independent vocal maturity annotations of these same target child vocalizations in a different study revealed a highly similar pattern of results (Cychosz et al, 2019). Detailed manuals and self-guided training materials, including a 'gold standard test' for this annotation scheme can be found at https://osf.io/b2jep/wiki/home/ (Casillas, Bunce, et al, 2017).…”

The role of caregiver speech in supporting language development in infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorder

“…Investigators should carefully consider the reliability and validity of the research strategy before collecting data. Day-long home language recordings are best suited to answer research questions about broad phenomenon (e.g., quantity of speech), and less well suited to ask questions about rare phenomenon or linguistic features without a salient acoustic signature (detection of wh-questions) (Casillas & Cristia, 2019). A priori research questions will help to ensure the approach is valid.…”

“…Limitations of automated software include variability in accuracy and precision of available tools (Räsänen et al, 2019) and lack of information on the context of recorded speech. If the recorded data are to be annotated or transcribed, an appropriate sampling procedure needs to be used as it is often not feasible to annotate the entire day-long recording (see Casillas & Cristia (2019) for a description of different sampling procedures).…”

Longform recordings of everyday life: Ethics for best practices

“…Even for those not interested in child development or language use, the DARCLE group can provide essential support and feedback for a variety of research pursuits in the behavioral and social sciences. Second, we direct readers to a couple of additional publications that complement topics addressed here, notably the comprehensive guide to longform audio collection in Casillas and Cristia (2019) and the HomeBank recording vetting manual (VanDam et al, 2018), available for download through the DARCLE website.…”