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观遗传学评估，作为语音的基础。这项工作首先关注进化信息动态系统框架内的典型声音发展，阐明声音发展的关键特征。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、语言发育迟缓）中的作用。基础工作侧重于：1）婴儿倾向于积极探索发声，创建并系统地重复类别（首先是尖叫声，咆哮声，类似元音的声音等），这些类别在第一年变得越来越像言语，2）婴儿倾向于使用这些类别进行互动； 3) 照顾者倾向于关注婴儿发声并识别婴儿发声类别以及它们如何表达婴儿状态和社会功能； 4) 动态互动，护理人员和婴儿系统地对发声做出反应，并以特定于婴儿发声类别及其功能的方式调节反应。这项工作的突破在于：1）比之前的工作更详细地关注声音类别，这些类别构成了看护者与婴儿声音互动的支点，影响发声及其社会功能； 2) 通过微遗传学方法，利用护理人员的计算机交互式日记数据、大量实验室记录和家庭全天记录，改善对变化的看法； 3) 通过训练有素的观察员和声学分析师对婴儿和护理人员发声的复杂编码，对婴儿和护理人员的发声情况进行复杂的编码，这些编码涉及婴儿出生后第一个 30 个月内的多个行动维度； 4）利用先进的定量工具（滞后序贯分析、递归量化分析和神经网络建模）来促进发声数据的快速和富有洞察力的处理； 5) 以前所未有的规模（数千小时的自然录音）对婴儿声音类别和护理人员声音反应进行自动分析，并通过大量人类编码和声学分析数据进行通知和验证。这些方法将为发展解释提供经验性的典型发展参考点，从而产生非凡的潜在影响。影响研究将测试研究确定的声音类别发展和互动的关键变量，使用研究中产生的自动分析工具作为 1) 发展的预测因子，2) 三组儿童的分化（通常是发育中、自闭症、语言延迟），以及 3) 现有数据库（包括 1486 个全天录音）中语言和社会发展的结果测量。

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.