Vocal exploration and interaction in the emergence of speech

描述(由申请人提供)：我们建议对早期人类发声进行纵向和微遗传学评估，作为语音的基础。这项工作首先集中在一个进化信息的动态系统框架内的典型声乐发展，阐明了声乐发展的关键特征。这项工作继续测试关键特征在预测发育和发育异常(自闭症、语言延迟)方面的作用。基础工作集中在：1)幼儿主动探索发声的倾向，创造并系统地重复类别(最初是尖叫声、咆哮声、元音样声音等)。在第一年，这一过程变得越来越像言语；2)婴儿倾向于使用这些类别进行互动；3)照顾者倾向于注意婴儿发声，并认识到婴儿发声类别以及它们如何表达婴儿的状态和社会功能；以及4)动态互动，即照顾者和婴儿对发声做出系统的反应，并以特定于婴儿发声类别及其功能的方式调节反应。这项工作的突破性进展是：1)比以前的工作更详细地关注构成照顾者-婴儿发声互动支点的发声类别，影响发声和他们的社会功能；2)通过使用来自照顾者的计算机交互日记数据、广泛的实验室录音和家庭全天录音，通过微遗传学方法改善对变化的看法；3)通过训练有素的观察者和声学分析员在生命头30个月期间对实验室和家庭录音进行复杂的编码，提高对婴儿和照顾者发声的看法；4)利用先进的量化工具(滞后序列分析、重复量化分析和神经网络建模)促进发声数据的快速和有洞察力的处理；以及5)以前所未有的规模(数千小时的自然录音)提供婴儿发声类别和照顾者发声反应的自动分析，并通过大量的人类编码和声学分析数据进行信息和验证。这些方法将产生非凡的潜在影响，为发展解释提供一个经验性的、典型的发展参照点。影响研究将使用研究中产生的自动化分析工具来测试研究确定的发声类别发展和相互作用的关键变量，作为1)发展、2)三组儿童(通常是发育中的、自闭症的、语言迟缓的)的预测因素，以及3)现有数据库中语言和社会发展的结果衡量标准，包括1486个全天录音。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose longitudinal and microgenetic evaluation of early human vocalizations as a foundation for speech. The work starts with focus on typical vocal development within an evolutionarily-informed, dynamic systems framework illuminating key features of vocal development. The work proceeds to test the key features in terms of their roles in predicting development and anomalies of development (autism, language delay). The basic work focuses on: 1) the infant tendency to actively explore vocalization, creating and systematically repeating categories (at first, squeals, growls, vowel-like sounds, etc.) that become increasingly speech-like across the 1st year, 2) the infant tendency to engage in interaction using those categories; 3) the caregiver tendency to attend to infant vocalization and recognize both the infant vocal categories and how they express infant state and social functions; and 4) the dynamic interaction, where caregiver and infant respond systematically to vocalizations and modulate reactions in ways that are specific to the infant vocal categories and their functions. This work breaks ground by: 1) focusing in much more detail than in prior work on the vocal categories that form the fulcrum of caregiver-infant vocal interaction, affecting both vocalizations and their social functions; 2) improving perspectives on change through microgenetic approaches with computer-interactive diary data from caregivers, extensive laboratory recordings, and all-day recordings in the home; 3) enhancing perspectives on both infant and caregiver vocalizations through sophisticated coding of both lab and home recordings by trained observers and acoustic analysts across many dimensions of action during the 1st 30 months of life; 4) exploiting advanced quantitative tools (lag sequential analysis, recurrence quantification analysis, and neural network modeling) to facilitate rapid and insightful processing of vocalization data; and 5) providing automated analysis of infant vocal categories and caregiver vocal reactions at unprecedented scales (thousands of hours of naturalistic recording) informed and validated by an extensive body of human coded and acoustically analyzed data. These approaches will yield extraordinary potential impact by providing an empirical typically-developing reference point for developmental interpretation. Impact studies will test the key variables of vocal category development and interaction determined by the research using automated analytical tools also produced in the research as predictors of 1) development, 2) differentiation of three groups of children (typically developing, autistic, language delayed), and 3) outcome measures of language and social development in an existing database including 1486 all-day recordings.