Beyond ba-ba and gu-gu: Challenges and strategies in coding infant vocalizations

Nathani, Suneeti; Oller, D. Kimbrough

doi:10.3758/bf03195385

Cited by 60 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…Vocalization boundaries were determined by the occurrence of an audible breath, or if no breath occurred, by a silence lasting 1 s or longer (Lynch, Oller, Steffens, Levine, et al, 1995). Consistent with standard practice (e.g., see Nathani & Oller, 2001), fixed signals (e.g., laughter, crying) and vegetative sounds (e.g., coughing, burps) were excluded from these data. As subsequently employed in this manuscript, therefore, the term vocalization refers to prespeech vocal utterances excluding fixed signals and vegetative noises.…”

Section: Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infant Vocal–Motor Coordination: Precursor to the Gesture–Speech System?

2004

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This study was designed to provide a general picture of infant vocal -motor coordination and test predictions generated by Iverson and Thelen's (1999) model of the development of the gesture -speech system. Forty-seven 6-to 9-month-old infants were videotaped with a primary caregiver during rattle and toy play. Results indicated an age-related increase in frequency of vocal -motor coordination, greater coordination with arm (specifically right arm) than leg or torso movements, and a temporal pattern similar to that in adult gesture -speech coproductions. Rhythmic vocalizations (consonant -vowel repetitions) were more likely to occur with than without rhythmic movement, and with rhythmic manual than with nonmanual activity, and the rate of vocalmanual coordination was higher in babblers than in prebabblers.

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Section: Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infant Vocal–Motor Coordination: Precursor to the Gesture–Speech System?

2004

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“…Determination of each of these typically requires breath group identifi cation as a preliminary analysis, and ignoring breath group structure can invalidate or compromise the measures. In addition, satisfactory interrater reliabilities have been reported for breath group and intonation unit determination [22,[30][31][32][33] . Satisfactory reliability of intonational boundary determination using perceptual criteria in conversational discourse analysis in subjects with CHI was reported by Wozniak et al [33] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dysarthria in Traumatic Brain Injury: A Breath Group and Intonational Analysis

Wang

Kent

Duffy

et al. 2005

Folia Phoniatr Logop

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Prosodic abnormality is a common feature in the dysarthrias associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI), but very few analytic studies have been reported on the nature of the prosodic disturbances. This study, based on analyses of conversational and sentence speech samples, reports on breath group structure and its temporal and intonational components for 12 subjects with TBI and 8 healthy controls. It introduces the method of f₀ close-copy stylization to the study of intonational patterns in dysarthria. The subjects with TBI had reduced mean length and variation of breath groups along with frequent inappropriate locations of breath pause and lengthy and variable breath pauses. Prosodic features that were preserved in the subjects with TBI were phrase final lengthening, f₀ downtrend and a relatively normal f₀ distribution. However, these subjects had reduced speaking and articulation rates, reduced f₀ movement and reduced f₀ slope. The phrase final lengthening and f₀ downtrend phenomena, which can serve as prosodic cues of syntactic boundary, appear to be robust features of speech production, but the dynamic features of f₀ control were more vulnerable to the neurological damage. This study indicates the importance of breath group management in TBI-induced dysarthria and the need to use methods such as those used in this study for large-scale investigations that examine cognitive, linguistic and motoric factors that conspire to reduce communicative efficiency.

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“…(Table 1 lists frequency data for these variables by age group.) Therefore, subsequent analyses were performed with data collapsed across age and gender.2 Infant vocalizations are difficult to transcribe as they often differ in timing and precision from adult forms (e.g., quasi-vowels; Nathani & Oller, 2001;Oller, 2000). During the second half of the first year, vocalizations (including those in this study) are generally more well formed (Oller, 2000), although still difficult to transcribe.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Influence of Mouthing on Infant Vocalization

Fagan

Iverson²

2007

Infancy

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Although vocalization and mouthing are behaviors frequently performed by infants, little is known about the characteristics of vocalizations that occur with objects, hands, or fingers in infants' mouths. The purpose of this research was to investigate characteristics of vocalizations associated with mouthing in 6-to 9-month-old infants during play with a primary caregiver. Results suggest that mouthing may influence the phonetic characteristics of vocalizations by introducing vocal tract closure and variation in consonant production.Mouthing, defined as contact of an object with the mouth, lips, or tongue (Rochat, 1989;Ruff, Saltarelli, Capozzoli, & Dubiner, 1992), is a common behavior during infancy (Belsky & Most, 1981;Fenson, Kagan, Kearsley, & Zelazo, 1976;Kopp, 1976). In a study of 7.5− to 21-month-old infants (Belsky & Most, 1981), all 40 infants displayed mouthing behavior during play with toys between 7.5 and 13.5 months. In addition to its prominence across infants, mouthing is a regularly occurring behavior both in terms of number of occurrences and duration of episodes (Kopp, 1976;Ruff, 1984;Whyte, McDonald, Baillargeon, & Newell, 1994).Studies of mouthing have not typically examined vocalizations associated with episodes of mouthing. Moreover, studies of mouthing often focus on the mouthing of objects, less frequently investigating contact of the hands and fingers with infants' mouths. Elbers (1982), however, noted that between ages 6 and 12 months her son vocalized with the back of one hand against his mouth and while holding his fingers in his mouth. She interpreted both activities as variants in bringing about vocal tract closure and constriction. In an additional study of 4 infants between 6 and 11 months, Ejiri and Masataka (2001) documented both the frequent occurrence of mouthing and co-occurrences of mouthing and vocalization; however, they did not describe the characteristics of co-occurring vocalizations. Descriptions of vocalizations that co-occur with mouthing may be important for three reasons: Mouthing is an exploratory behavior that may extend to encompass exploration of co-occurring vocalizations; the peak period of mouthing behavior in infancy coincides with and may contribute to advances in consonant production; and mouthing, which appears to contribute to the development of multimodal object perception, may also contribute to the development of multimodal speech perception. Mouthing and ExplorationStudies documenting the exploratory nature of object-related mouthing have consistently shown that infants use mouthing as a means to explore object characteristics and discover what they afford for action (Fenson et al., 1976;Rochat, 1989;Ruff et al., 1992). Moreover, infants vary their approach to exploration to maximize the information they obtain (e.g., scratching objects to obtain information about their affordance for noise; Rochat, 1989) and exploit affordances differentially (e.g., fingering textured objects and mouthing patterned objects). The exploratory nature of mouth...

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Beyond ba-ba and gu-gu: Challenges and strategies in coding infant vocalizations

Cited by 60 publications

References 23 publications

Infant Vocal–Motor Coordination: Precursor to the Gesture–Speech System?

Infant Vocal–Motor Coordination: Precursor to the Gesture–Speech System?

Dysarthria in Traumatic Brain Injury: A Breath Group and Intonational Analysis

The Influence of Mouthing on Infant Vocalization

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