275 research outputs found
Melanie Soderstrom's Quick Files
No full textThe Quick Files feature was discontinued and it’s files were migrated into this Project on March 11, 2022. The file URL’s will still resolve properly, and the Quick Files logs are available in the Project’s Recent Activity
Infant vocal responses to questions and declaratives in maternal speech
No full textInfants are perceptually sensitive to rising pitch over falling pitch (Sullivan & Horowitz, 1983) and this is reflected in their ability to discriminate between questions and declaratives in maternal speech (Soderstrom, Ko, & Nevzorova, 2011). Questions are proposed to play a fundamental role in the acquisition process by soliciting vocalization on the part of the infant (Snow, 1977). In the current study, we explored whether infant vocal responses to questions were distinct from those to declaratives; in particular, whether the use of questions by mothers encouraged greater vocalization by infants. Contrary to our hypothesis, infant vocalizations were no more likely to occur in response to questions. Infants responded more to questions when they were defined by rising pitch contours rather than falling ones. Infants did not respond more to declaratives with rising pitch contours. Questions, in combination with rising pitch contour, may provide especially salient response cues for infants. We propose that infants rely on these perceptual cues to learn when to respond during vocal exchanges with their mothers.October 201
Developing a cross-cultural annotation system and metacorpus for studying infants' real world language experience
No full textRecent issues around reproducibility, best practices, and cultural bias impact naturalistic observational approaches as much as experimental approaches, but there has been less focus onthis area. Here, we present a new approach that leverages cross-laboratory collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts to examine important psychological questions. We illustrate this approach with a particular project that examines similarities and differences in children's early experiences with language. This project develops a comprehensive start-to-finish analysis pipeline by developing a flexible and systematic annotation system, and implementing this system across a sampling from a metacorpus of audiorecordings of diverse language communities. This resource is publicly available for use, sensitive to cultural differences, and flexible to address a variety of research questions. It is also uniquely suited for use in the development of tools for automated analysis.Fil: Soderstrom, Melanie. University of Manitoba; CanadáFil: Casillas, Marisa. University of Chicago; Estados UnidosFil: Bergelson, Elika. University of Duke; Estados UnidosFil: Rosemberg, Celia Renata. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Psicología Matemática y Experimental Dr. Horacio J. A. Rimoldi; ArgentinaFil: Alam, Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Psicología Matemática y Experimental Dr. Horacio J. A. Rimoldi; ArgentinaFil: Warlaumont, Anne S.. University of California at Los Angeles; Estados UnidosFil: Bunce, John. California State University; Estados Unido
Quantifying child directed speech cross-culturally across development
No full textChild-directed speech (CDS) influences language development (e.g., Golinkoff et al., 2015), but varies across cultural and demographic groups (Hoff, 2006). Recent work examining speech heard by North American English (NAE) infants found an increased proportion of CDS with age (Bergelson et al., 2018). Quantity of CDS remained relatively constant across age, while quantity of adult-directed speech (ADS) decreased. We replicate these findings using a different methodology, and expand them to include other language communities. Our data come from daylong audio recordings of 58 children ages 2?36 months from the ACLEW dataset (Bergelson et al., 2017; 30 children acquiring NAE, 10 UK English, 8 Argentinian Spanish, and 10 Tseltal/Mayan). Ten randomly selected 2-min segments (Tseltal: nine 5-min segments) from each child were annotated for speaker gender, age (child or adult), and addressee for each utterance. We calculated the minutes per hour of CDS, ADS, and all speech. Preliminary analyses find high variability in overall language input across individuals, age, and culture, and partially replicate the Bergelson et al. (2018) pattern of results. Ongoing annotation will permit finer-grained analyses of sub-group differences. Further analyses will examine the influence of factors such as speaker gender, number of speakers, and maternal education.Fil: Bunce, John. University of Manitoba; CanadáFil: Casillas, Marisa. Max Planck Institute For Psycholinguistics; Países BajosFil: Bergelson, Elika. University of Duke; Estados UnidosFil: Stein, Alejandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Psicología Matemática y Experimental Dr. Horacio J. A. Rimoldi; ArgentinaFil: Waurlamont, Anne. University of California at Los Angeles; Estados UnidosFil: Rosemberg, Celia Renata. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Psicología Matemática y Experimental Dr. Horacio J. A. Rimoldi; ArgentinaFil: Kirby, Jessica. University of Manitoba; CanadáFil: Soderstrom, Melanie. University of Manitoba; Canadá177 Meeting of the Acoustic Society of AmericaLouisvilleEstados UnidosAcoustical Society of Americ
Impact of maternal smartphone use on language output
No full textSmartphones have not been critically assessed to the same extent as television to determine their potential impact on infant language development. Twenty-eight mother-infant dyads (Female = 17, Male = 11) 6 to 9 months-old (N = 13, M = 7.46 months, SD = 1.05) or 12 to 15 months-old (N = 15, M = 12.8 months, SD = 0.77) were recorded for 4 hours using the Language Environment Analysis device while maternal smartphone usage was tracked using a third-party application (RealizD or QualityTime). Previous research indicates that social media is frequently used by mothers for interpersonal support (Duggan et al., 2015), therefore it was critical to determine how these types of applications might impact infant language development. Mothers with 6 to 9 month-old infants used their smartphones about the same as mothers with 12 to 15 month-old infants. Maternal smartphone usage did not relate to the amount of language when analyzed across the whole 4 hours but correlated with less language heard by infants when examined at the 5-minute level in the 12 to 15 month age group. Finally, maternal social media use was not associated with decreases in the language heard by infants in the study. These results suggest that social media specific smartphone usage had minimal impact on the amount of language infants heard. While maternal smartphone usage impacted the amount of language heard by infants at the 5-minute level, age was the most important determinant in how often a mother spoke to her infant.February 202
9- and 12-month-olds fail to perceive infant-directed speech in an ecologically valid multi-talker background
No full textLittle is known about infants’ ability to deal with commonly encountered situations in which speech from one individual occurs simultaneously with that of others. Previous research has shown that while age of the infant and intensity of the background matter, so does the number of background speakers. The read-aloud multi-talker speech used in previous studies is perceptually different from conversational speech typically encountered by infants. To test generalizability, this study used a background of ecologically valid multi-talker speech. Using the head-turn preference procedure, infants were presented with passages of background noise with and without target infant-directed speech at a 10 dB SNR. Results show that while 9-month-olds prefer passages containing target speech with a white noise background, both 9- and 12-month-olds failed to show a preference with a multi-talker background. This inability to segregate speech streams under ecologically valid conditions demonstrates the adversity infants face to learn their community’s language.February 201
Changement de fonction des éléments prosodiques au cours du développement : du tout vers la partie et de la partie vers le tout
No full textThe Expansion of School Resource Officers in a Florida County: A Mixed Methods Study
No full textIn the aftermath of school shootings, policymakers presented the expansion of school resource officers (SROs) in the nation\u27s schools as a method for keeping students safe. Recently, policing in the United States has come under increased scrutiny, and several school districts across the country cancelled their SRO contracts with law enforcement agencies. Notably, these contradictory decisions have been made with limited empirical knowledge surrounding, the roles, preparedness, and impact of SROs. A county in Florida substantially expanded its SRO program in the 2016-17 school year creating a new unit within the local sheriff\u27s office and an opportunity to investigate these topics. A convergent parallel mixed methods design was applied to examine this new unit, consisting of a quantitative strand using interrupted time series analysis to assess the new program\u27s effect on school-based arrests and Baker Act apprehensions, and a qualitative strand collecting and analyzing participant observations of training requirements and in-depth interviews with the SROs to explore their responsibilities, roles, and preparation for the position. Qualitative findings demonstrate that the primary role of the SROs is safety and security, while some also engage in a secondary role of engaging in positive interactions with the school community. Ambiguity exists surrounding execution of these roles, with the SROs relying a great deal on other relevant actors during decision-making. SROs identified the importance of careful selection for the position, training requirements are described, and problems with the training are identified. Contrary to this study\u27s hypotheses, quantitative results show that the new unit did not have a statistically significant impact on overall school-based arrests, but disaggregating the data showed a significant impact on felony arrests. Similarly, there was no statistically significant impact on overall Baker Act apprehensions of students, however, there is preliminary evidence of an impact on elementary school-aged students
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