Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 9, 2025

Recording Mouse Ultrasonic Vocalizations to Evaluate Social Communication
Published on: June 5, 2016
Characterization of children's verbal input in a forager-farmer population using long-form audio recordings and
Camila Scaff1,2, Marisa Casillas3, Jonathan Stieglitz4
1University of Zurich, Institute of Evolutionary Medicine (IEM), Zurich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
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.
More Related Videos
09:09Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
09:27Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language
Published on: October 13, 2018
Related Concept Videos
Language Development
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
Components of Language
Auditory Perception
Naturalistic Observations
Qualitative Analysis
There are two main approaches to qualitative analysis:...