ERIC Number: EJ1436356
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Sep
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1363-755X
EISSN: EISSN-1467-7687
Comparison of Speech and Music Input in North American Infants' Home Environment over the First 2 Years of Life
Lindsay Hippe; Victoria Hennessy; Naja Ferjan Ramirez; T. Christina Zhao
Developmental Science, v27 n5 e13528 2024
Infants are immersed in a world of sounds from the moment their auditory system becomes functional, and experience with the auditory world shapes how their brain processes sounds in their environment. Across cultures, speech and music are two dominant auditory signals in infants' daily lives. Decades of research have repeatedly shown that both quantity and quality of speech input play critical roles in infant language development. Less is known about the music input infants receive in their environment. This study is the first to compare music input to speech input across infancy by analyzing a longitudinal dataset of daylong audio recordings collected in English-learning infants' home environments, at 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months of age. Using a crowdsourcing approach, 643 naïve listeners annotated 12,000 short snippets (10 s) randomly sampled from the recordings using Zooniverse, an online citizen-science platform. Results show that infants overall receive significantly more speech input than music input and the gap widens as the infants get older. At every age point, infants were exposed to more music from an electronic device than an in-person source; this pattern was reversed for speech. The percentage of input intended for infants remained the same over time for music while that percentage significantly increased for speech. We propose possible explanations for the limited music input compared to speech input observed in the present (North American) dataset and discuss future directions. We also discuss the opportunities and caveats in using a crowdsourcing approach to analyze large audio datasets. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/lFj_sEaBMN4
Descriptors: Infants, North Americans, Family Environment, Music, Speech, Auditory Stimuli, Auditory Perception, Audiolingual Skills, Linguistic Input, Acoustics, Developmentally Appropriate Practices, Child Development, Electronic Equipment
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research; Information Analyses
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health (NIH) (DHHS)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: R01DC020419
Data File: URL: osf.io/84rt9