In the previous decade, dozens of studies involving thousands of children across several research disciplines have made use of a combined daylong audio-recorder and automated algorithmic analysis ...called the LENA
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system, which aims to assess children’s language environment. While the system’s prevalence in the language acquisition domain is steadily growing, there are only scattered validation efforts on only some of its key characteristics. Here, we assess the LENA
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system’s accuracy across all of its key measures: speaker classification, Child Vocalization Counts (CVC), Conversational Turn Counts (CTC), and Adult Word Counts (AWC). Our assessment is based on manual annotation of clips that have been randomly or periodically sampled out of daylong recordings, collected from (a) populations similar to the system’s original training data (North American English-learning children aged 3-36 months), (b) children learning another dialect of English (UK), and (c) slightly older children growing up in a different linguistic and socio-cultural setting (Tsimane’ learners in rural Bolivia). We find reasonably high accuracy in some measures (AWC, CVC), with more problematic levels of performance in others (CTC, precision of male adults and other children). Statistical analyses do not support the view that performance is worse for children who are dissimilar from the LENA
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original training set. Whether LENA
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results are accurate enough for a given research, educational, or clinical application depends largely on the specifics at hand. We therefore conclude with a set of recommendations to help researchers make this determination for their goals.
Recent advances in large-scale data storage and processing offer unprecedented opportunities for behavioral scientists to collect and analyze naturalistic data, including from underrepresented ...groups. Audio data, particularly real-world audio recordings, are of particular interest to behavioral scientists because they provide high-fidelity access to subtle aspects of daily life and social interactions. However, these methodological advances pose novel risks to research participants and communities. In this article, we outline the benefits and challenges associated with collecting, analyzing, and sharing multi-hour audio recording data. Guided by the principles of autonomy, privacy, beneficence, and justice, we propose a set of ethical guidelines for the use of longform audio recordings in behavioral research. This article is also accompanied by an Open Science Framework Ethics Repository that includes informed consent resources such as frequent participant concerns and sample consent forms.
Language input in childhood and literacy (and/or schooling) have been described as two key experiences impacting phonological processing. In this study, we assess phonological processing via a ...non-word repetition (NWR) group game, in adults and children living in two villages of an ethnic group where infants are rarely spoken to, and where literacy is variable. We found lower NWR scores than in previous work for both children (N = 17; aged 1-12 years) and adults (N = 13; aged 18-60 years), which is consistent with the hypothesis that there would be long-term effects on phonological processing of experiencing low levels of directed input in infancy. Additionally, we found some evidence that literacy and/or schooling increases NWR scores, although results should be interpreted with caution given the small sample size. These findings invite further investigations in similar communities, as current results are most compatible with phonological processing being influenced by aspects of language experience that vary greatly between and within populations.
This commentary argues that to increase diversity in language acquisition research, the field should define specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-defined goals, and prioritize ...solutions based on their importance, tractability, and neglectedness, ideally in collaboration with a variety of other agents outside the research community.
There is little systematically collected quantitative empirical data on how much linguistic input children in small‐scale societies encounter, with some estimates suggesting low levels of directed ...speech. We report on an ecologically‐valid analysis of speech experienced over the course of a day by young children (N = 24, 6–58 months old, 33% female) in a forager‐horticulturalist population of lowland Bolivia. A permissive definition of input (i.e., including overlapping, background, and non‐linguistic vocalizations) leads to massive changes in terms of input quantity, including a quadrupling of the estimate for overall input compared to a restrictive definition (only near and clear speech), while who talked to and around a focal child is relatively stable across input definitions. We discuss implications of these results for theoretical and empirical research into language acquisition.
There is emerging evidence of long-term sequelae in a considerable proportion of COVID-19 patients after recovery and the spectrum and severity of such sequelae should be systematically reviewed. ...This review aims to evaluate the available evidence of all intermediate and long-term COVID-19 sequelae affecting formerly healthy adults.
A systematic literature search of Embase, WHO, Scopus, Pubmed, Litcovid, bioRxiv and medRxiv was conducted with a cutoff date of the 17th September 2020 according to PRISMA guidelines and registered in PROSPERO (CRD42020208725). Search terms included “COVID-19”, “coronavirus disease 2019”, “SARS-CoV-2”, “sequelae” and “consequence*”. Publications on adult participants, with a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection were included. Elderly (>50 years old) and children (<18 years old) were excluded. Bias assessment was performed using a modified Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.
A total of 31 papers were included. Study types included prospective and retrospective cohort studies, cross-sectional studies and case reports. Sequelae persistence since infection spanned 14 days to three months. Sequelae included persistent fatigue (39–73% of assessed persons), breathlessness (39–74%), decrease in quality of life (44–69%), impaired pulmonary function, abnormal CT findings including pulmonary fibrosis (39–83%), evidence of peri-/perimyo-/myocarditis (3–26%), changes in microstructural and functional brain integrity with persistent neurological symptoms (55%), increased incidence of psychiatric diagnoses (5.8% versus 2.5–3.4% in controls), incomplete recovery of olfactory and gustatory dysfunction (33–36% of evaluated persons).
A variety of organ systems are affected by COVID-19 in the intermediate and longer-term after recovery. Main sequelae include post-infectious fatigue, persistent reduced lung function and carditis. Careful follow-up post COVID 19 is indicated to assess and mitigate possible organ damage and preserve life quality.
This study evaluates whether early vocalizations develop in similar ways in children across diverse cultural contexts. We analyze data from daylong audio recordings of 49 children (1–36 months) from ...five different language/cultural backgrounds. Citizen scientists annotated these recordings to determine if child vocalizations contained canonical transitions or not (e.g., “ba” vs. “ee”). Results revealed that the proportion of clips reported to contain canonical transitions increased with age. Furthermore, this proportion exceeded 0.15 by around 7 months, replicating and extending previous findings on canonical vocalization development but using data from the natural environments of a culturally and linguistically diverse sample. This work explores how crowdsourcing can be used to annotate corpora, helping establish developmental milestones relevant to multiple languages and cultures. Lower inter‐annotator reliability on the crowdsourcing platform, relative to more traditional in‐lab expert annotators, means that a larger number of unique annotators and/or annotations are required, and that crowdsourcing may not be a suitable method for more fine‐grained annotation decisions. Audio clips used for this project are compiled into a large‐scale infant vocalization corpus that is available for other researchers to use in future work.
Using crowdsourced annotations of infant vocalizations, we establish that infants in a large, cross‐linguistic sample reach core babbling milestones regardless of language or sociocultural exposure.
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