Identification of Prelinguistic Phonological Categories

Abstract

Purpose The prelinguistic infant’s babbling repertoire of syllables—the phonological categories that form the basis for early word learning—is noticed by caregivers who interact with infants around them. Prior research on babbling has not explored the caregiver’s role in recognition of early vocal categories as foundations for word learning. In the present work, the authors begin to address this gap. Method The authors explored vocalizations produced by 8 infants at 3 ages (8, 10, and 12 months) in studies illustrating identification of phonological categories through caregiver report, laboratory procedures simulating the caregiver’s natural mode of listening, and the more traditional laboratory approach (phonetic transcription). Results Caregivers reported small repertoires of syllables for their infants. Repertoires of similar size and phonetic content were discerned in the laboratory by judges who simulated the caregiver’s natural mode of listening. However, phonetic transcription with repeated listening to infant recordings yielded repertoire sizes that vastly exceeded those reported by caregivers and naturalistic listeners. Conclusions The results suggest that caregiver report and naturalistic listening by laboratory staff can provide a new way to explore key characteristics of early infant vocal categories, a way that may provide insight into later speech and language development.

Vocal Patterns in Infants with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Canonical Babbling Status and Vocalization Frequency

“…The coders independently watched the videos, counting both syllables and canonical syllables in real time. This procedure is utilized regularly in the laboratories of the last author in accord with reasoning presented in recent papers, especially Ramsdell et al (2012). This naturalistic listening approach mimics how a mother would hear her child, listening to each utterance only once.…”

Using nonlinear methods to quantify changes in infant limb movements and vocalizations

“…The nonlinear measures revealed developmental trends: we observed a trend toward lower stability and less multiscale dependency in utterance timings. Together, these might index a growing capability on the part of SW to use vocalizations in communicative interaction with other individuals (Jaffe et al, 2001; Ramsdell et al, 2012). The decrease in %DET suggests a diversification of utterance timing patterns over time (Fusaroli and Tylén, under review), while the decrease observed in AF indicates a decline in endogenous vocalization-fluctuations over time toward a more locally determined pattern of vocalization timing (e.g., Kuznetsov and Wallot, 2011).…”

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

“…In both cases the recordings were made during natural interactions of parents and sometimes experimenters with infants. The data selected here overlapped with but were not identical to the data used in any of several prior studies drawn from these archives (Buder, Chorna, Oller, & Robinson, 2008; Chen & Kent, 2009, 2010; Oller et al, 2013; Ramsdell, Oller, Buder, Ethington, & Chorna, 2012). …”