Characterization of children's verbal input in a forager‐farmer population using long‐form audio recordings and diverse input definitions

Scaff, Camila; Casillas, Marisa; Stieglitz, Jonathan; Cristia, Alejandrina

doi:10.1111/infa.12568

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Another limitation was the use of elicited phrases, and the focus on one specific syllable, /ki/, as context for the perception study. We also hope to utilise other extant corpora (such as the Bible, mentioned in the Introduction) to study this contrast in a wider variety of materials, including some from spontaneous conversations and extant child-centered corpora [16]. Our perceptual study is also affected by a relatively small sample size, although results are quite clear in that they suggest the contrast is easily recovered by listeners.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

〈'〉 in Tsimane': a Preliminary Investigation

Havard,

Sy,

Scaff

et al. 2023

Interspeech 2023

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Tsimane' is a language spoken in Bolivia by several thousand people. Yet, it has not been described in detail. We aim to take a step towards a better description by focusing on an aspect of language: the sound represented in spelling with 〈'〉, informally described as a glottal stop. We recorded two adult speakers of Tsimane' producing (near-)minimal pairs involving this sound. Perceptual analyses suggested 〈'〉 is very rarely realised as a full glottal stop, and is more often cued by creaky-voiced vowels and nasals. Despite the variability in implementation, presentation of syllabic minimal pairs to these two informants and two other adult Tsimane' listeners revealed evidence that they could easily perceive when 〈'〉 was intended. Together, these data suffice to rule out the hypothesis that 〈'〉 is systematically realised as a full stop, and suggests instead a more complex set of perceptual cues may be at speakers' and listeners' disposal.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

〈'〉 in Tsimane': a Preliminary Investigation

Havard,

Sy,

Scaff

et al. 2023

Interspeech 2023

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“…However, it is worth noting that most of these studies come from children in North America where young children are typically cared for by adult caregivers; much less is known about the characteristics of CDS from children in contexts in which it is common for infants to be cared for by older siblings (Brown, 2011;Zukow-Goldring, 2002). Importantly, differences in the distribution of input between adults versus older children has been shown to differ cross-culturally (Bunce et al, 2024;Scaff, Casillas, Stieglitz, & Cristia, 2024). For example, one comparative study of French-learning toddlers in France and Sesotho-learning toddlers from Lesotho in South Africa showed that the children in France heard the most input from mothers while the children in South Africa heard more of their input from other children (Loukatou et al, 2022).…”

Section: Language Input Varies By the Type Of Speakermentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingual language input to infants in Bolivia and the United States

Cychosz,

Weisleder,

Villanueva

2024

Preprint

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Characterizing dual language input in children’s environments is critical to understand how early language experiences influence bilingual language development. However, little is known about how dual language exposure is distributed across factors known to influence the kinds of input children receive. This study examined how infants’ exposure to each of their languages is distributed across different speakers (adults versus other children) and speech registers (child- versus adult-directed speech). We examined daylong audio recordings of infants’ language environments in two bilingual communities: an indigenous Quechua- and Spanish-speaking community in Bolivia (n=10, M age = 9 months, 5 females, 5 males) and an immigrant Spanish- and English-speaking community in the United States (n=10, M age = 9 months, 4 females, 6 males). Infants in both communities were more likely to hear the societal language from older children than from adult caregivers. Infants were also more likely to hear the societal language in child-directed speech, and more of the minoritized language in adult-directed speech, by a factor of more than 4 to 1. Thus, infants in both cultures hear each of their languages in contexts that do, and do not, facilitate minoritized language transmission. These findings have implications for bilingual language development and maintenance, as distinct social contexts afford different opportunities for engagement and interaction over the course of learning two languages in infancy.

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Validation of the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) Automated Speech Processing Algorithm Labels for Adult and Child Segments in a Sample of Families From India

Meera,

Swaminathan,

Venkata Murali

et al. 2024

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) technology uses automated speech processing (ASP) algorithms to estimate counts such as total adult words and child vocalizations, which helps understand children's early language environment. This ASP has been validated in North American English and other languages in predominantly monolingual contexts but not in a multilingual context like India. Thus, the current study aims to validate the classification accuracy of the LENA algorithm specifically focusing on speaker recognition of adult segments (AdS) and child segments (ChS) in a sample of bi/multilingual families from India. Method: Thirty neurotypical children between 6 and 24 months ( M = 12.89, SD = 4.95) were recruited. Participants were growing up in bi/multilingual environment hearing a combination of Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi, and/or English. Daylong audio recordings were collected using LENA and processed using the ASP to automatically detect segments across speaker categories. Two human annotators manually annotated ~900 min (37,431 segments across speaker categories). Performance accuracy (recall and precision) was calculated for AdS and ChS. Results: The recall and precision for AdS were 0.62 (95% confidence interval [CI] [0.61, 0.63]) and 0.83 (95% CI [0.8, 0.83]), respectively. This indicated that 62% of the segments identified as AdS by the human annotator were also identified as AdS by the LENA ASP algorithm and 83% of the segments labeled by the LENA ASP as AdS were also labeled by the human annotator as AdS. Similarly, the recall and precision for ChS were 0.65 (95% CI [0.64, 0.66]) and 0.55 (95% CI [0.54, 0.56]), respectively. Conclusions: This study documents the performance of the ASP in correctly classifying speakers as adult or child in a sample of families from India, indicating recall and precision that is relatively low. This study lays the groundwork for future investigations aiming to refine the algorithm models, potentially facilitating more accurate performance in bi/multilingual societies like India. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27910710

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Characterization of children's verbal input in a forager‐farmer population using long‐form audio recordings and diverse input definitions

Cited by 5 publications

References 66 publications

〈'〉 in Tsimane': a Preliminary Investigation

〈'〉 in Tsimane': a Preliminary Investigation

Bilingual language input to infants in Bolivia and the United States

Validation of the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) Automated Speech Processing Algorithm Labels for Adult and Child Segments in a Sample of Families From India

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