58 research outputs found

    An automatic child-directed speech detector for the study of child language development

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    http://interspeech2012.org/accepted-abstract.html?id=210In this paper, we present an automatic child-directed speech detection system to be used in the study of child language development. Child-directed speech (CDS) is speech that is directed by caregivers towards infants. It is not uncommon for corpora used in child language development studies to have a combination of CDS and non-CDS. As the size of the corpora used in these studies grow, manual annotation of CDS becomes impractical. Our automatic CDS detector addresses this issue. The focus of this paper is to propose and evaluate different sets of features for the detection of CDS, using several offthe-shelf classifiers. First, we look at the performance of a set of acoustic features. We continue by combining these acoustic features with several linguistic and eventually contextual features. Using the full set of features, our CDS detector was able to correctly identify CDS with an accuracy of.88 and F1 score of.87 using Naive Bayes. Index Terms: motherese, automatic, child-directed speech, infant-directed speech, adult-directed speech, prosody, language development

    A new approach for motherese detection using a semi-supervised algorithm

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    International audienc

    Infants’ Discrimination of Familiar and Unfamiliar Accents in Speech

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    This study investigates infants’ discrimination abilities for familiar and unfamiliar regional English accents. Using a variation of the head-turn preference procedure, 5-month-old infants demonstrated that they were able to distinguish between their own South-West English accent and an unfamiliar Welsh English accent. However, this distinction was not seen when two unfamiliar accents (Welsh English and Scottish English) were presented to the infants, indicating they had not acquired the general ability to distinguish between regional varieties, but only the distinction between their home accent and unfamiliar regional variations. This ability was also confirmed with 7-month-olds, challenging recent claims that infants lose their sensitivity to dialects at around that age. Taken together, our results argue in favor of an early sensitivity to the intonation system of languages, and to the early learning of accent-specific intonation and potentially segmental patterns. Implications for the development of accent normalization abilities are discussed

    Emotional Speech Classification Based on Multi View Characterization

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    International audienc

    Voice and speech perception in autism : a systematic review

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    Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by persistent impairments in social communication and interaction, restricted and repetitive behavior. In the original description of autism by Kanner (1943) the presence of emotional impairments was already emphasized (self-absorbed, emotionally cold, distanced, and retracted). However, little research has been conducted focusing on auditory perception of vocal emotional cues, being the audio-visual comprehension most commonly explored instead. Similarly to faces, voices play an important role in social interaction contexts in which individuals with ASD show impairments. The aim of the current systematic review was to integrate evidence from behavioral and neurobiological studies for a more comprehensive understanding of voice processing abnormalities in ASD. Among different types of information that the human voice may provide, we hypothesize particular deficits with vocal affect information processing by individuals with ASD. The relationship between vocal stimuli impairments and disrupted Theory of Mind in Autism is discussed. Moreover, because ASD are characterized by deficits in social reciprocity, further discussion of the abnormal oxytocin system in individuals with ASD is performed as a possible biological marker for abnormal vocal affect information processing and social interaction skills in ASD population

    Low phonological awareness and control, and consequenet low phonetic competence in advanced-level students of English : an action research project.

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    Este trabajo describe un estudio de investigación-acción en el campo de la enseñanza del Inglés como Idioma Extranjero en una Escuela Oficial de Idiomas española. Se halló que la pronunciación inglesa de los alumnos del Nivel Avanzado era muy deficiente, con errores persistentes y fosilizados, en relación al nivel oficialmente reconocido. Se establece como hipótesis fuertemente fundamentada que las causas de la presente situación-problema son patentes y múltiples: dado que todas ellas hacen referencia a acontecimientos pasados irremediables, el investigador creyó finalmente más útil intervenir, con una acción puntual que impulsaría de inmediato la competencia fonética en inglés de los alumnos, acción que formalmente consistió en un “Mini-cursillo acelerado de Fonética y Fonología inglesas”. Tras revisar la teoría pertinente en pos de justificación y orientación para la acción, el autor narra su propia experiencia, que transcurrió a lo largo de tres sesiones, del 10 al 17 de Mayo de 2012.Filologia InglesaMáster en Profesor de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanzas de Idioma

    Infant prosodic expressions in mother-infant communication

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    Prosody, generally defined as any perceivable modulation of duration, pitch or loudness in the voice that conveys meaning, has been identified as part of the linguistic system, or compared with the sound system of Western classical music. This thesis proposes a different conception, namely that prosody is a phenomenon of human expression that precedes, and to a certain extent determines the form and function of utterances in any particular language or music system. Findings from studies of phylogenesis and ontogenesis are presented in favour of this definition. Consequently, prosody of infant vocal expressions, which are made by individuals who have not yet developed either language or musical skills, is investigated as a phenomenon in itself, with its own rules. Recognising theoretical and methodological deficiencies in the linguistic and the Piagetian approaches to the development of infant prosodic expressions, this thesis supports the view that the origins of language are to be sought in the expressive dialogues between the mother and her prelinguistic child that are generated by intuitive motives for communication. Furthermore, infant vocalisations are considered as part of a system of communication constituted by all expressive modalities. Thus, the aim is to investigate the role of infant prosodic expressions in conveying emotions and communicative functions in relation to the accompanying non vocal-behaviours. A crossectional Pilot Study involving 16 infants aged 26 to 56 weeks and their mothers was undertaken to help in the design of the Main Study. The Main Study became a case description of two first born infants and their mothers; a boy (Robin) and a girl (Julie) both aged 30 weeks at the beginning of the study. The infants were filmed in their home every fortnight for five months in a structured naturalistic setting which included the following conditions: mother-infant free-play with their own toys, mother-infant play without using objects, the infant playing alone, motherinfant play with objects provided by the researcher, a 'car task' for eliciting cooperative play, and the mother staying unresponsive. Each filming session lasted approximately thirty minutes. In order to get an insight into the infants' 'meaning potential' expressed in their vocalisations, the mothers were asked to visit the department sometime in the interval between two filming sessions and, while watching the most recent video, to report what they felt their infant was conveyingif anything- in each vocalisation. Three types of analysis were carried out: a) An Analysis of Prosody - An attempt was made to obtain an objective, and not linguistically based account of infant prosodic features. First measurements were obtained of the duration and the fundamental frequency curve of each vocalisation by means of a computer programme for sound analysis. The values of fundamental frequency were then logarithmically transformed into a semitone scale in order to obtain measurements more sensitive to the mother's perception. b) A Functional Micro-Analysis of Non-Vocal Behaviours from Videos - The non vocal behaviours of mother and infant related with each vocalisation were codified without sound to examine to what extent the mothers relied for their interpretations on non-vocal behaviours accompanying vocalisations. c) An Analysis of the Mothers' Interpretations - The infants' messages were defined as perceived by their mother. The corpus comprised 713 vocalisations (322 for the boy and 391 for the girl) selected from a corpus of 864, and 143 minutes of video recording (64 for the boy and 79 for the girl). Correlations between the above three assessments were specified through statistical analysis. The findings from both infants indicate that between seven and eleven months prosodic patterns are not related one to one with particular messages. Rather, prosody distinguishes between groups of messages conveying features of psychological motivation, such as 'emotional', 'interpersonal', 'referential', 'assertive' or 'receptive'. Individual messages belonging to the same message group according to the analysis of prosody, are distinguished on the basis of the accompanying nonvocal behaviours. Before nine months, 'interpersonal' vocalisations display more 'alerting' prosodic patterns than 'referential' vocalisations. After nine months prosodic patterns in Robin's vocalisations differentiate between 'assertive' and 'receptive' messages, the former being expressed by more 'alerting' prosodic patterns than the latter. This distinction reflects a better Self-Other awareness. On the other hand, Julie's vocalisations occurring in situations of 'Joint Interest' display different prosodic patterns from her vocalisations uttered in situations of 'Converging Interest'. These changes in the role infant prosody reflect developments in the infants' motivational organisation which will lead to a more efficient control of intersubjective orientation and shared attention to the environment. Moreover, it was demonstrated that new forms of prosodic expression occur in psychologically mature situations, while the psychologically novel situations are expressed by mature prosodic forms. The above results suggest that at the threshold to language, prosody does not primarily serve identifiable linguistic functions. Rather, in spite of individual differences in form of their vocalisations, both infants use prosody in combination with other modalities as part of an expressive system, that conveys information about their motives. In this way prosody facilitates intersubjective and later cooperative communication, on which language development is built. To what extent such prelinguistic prosodic patterns are similar in form to those of the target language is a crucial issue for further investigation

    Rhythmic structure facilitates learning from auditory input in newborn infants

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    Rhythm and metrical regularities are fundamental properties of music and poetry - and all of those are used in the interaction between infants and their parents. Music and rhythm perception have been shown to support auditory and language skills. Here we compare newborn infants' learning from a song, a nursery rhyme, and normal speech for the first time in the same study. Infants' electrophysiological brain responses revealed that the nursery rhyme condition facilitated learning from auditory input, and thus led to successful detection of deviations. These findings suggest that coincidence of prosodic cue patterns and to-be-learned items is more important than the format of the input. Overall, the present results support the view that rhythm is likely to create a template for future events, which allows auditory system to predict prospective input and thus facilitates language development.Peer reviewe
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