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. 2017 Jul-Aug;22(4):514-539.
doi: 10.1111/infa.12165. Epub 2016 Sep 28.

Multiple Coordination Patterns in Infant and Adult Vocalizations

Drew H Abney  1 , Anne S Warlaumont  1 , D Kimbrough Oller  2 , Sebastian Wallot  3 , Christopher T Kello  1
Affiliations

Multiple Coordination Patterns in Infant and Adult Vocalizations

Drew H Abney et al. Infancy. 2017 Jul-Aug.

Abstract

The study of vocal coordination between infants and adults has led to important insights into the development of social, cognitive, emotional and linguistic abilities. We used an automatic system to identify vocalizations produced by infants and adults over the course of the day for fifteen infants studied longitudinally during the first two years of life. We measured three different types of vocal coordination: coincidence-based, rate-based, and cluster-based. Coincidence-based and rate-based coordination are established measures in the developmental literature. Cluster-based coordination is new and measures the strength of matching in the degree to which vocalization events occur in hierarchically nested clusters. We investigated whether various coordination patterns differ as a function of vocalization type, whether different coordination patterns provide unique information about the dynamics of vocal interaction, and how the various coordination patterns each relate to infant age. All vocal coordination patterns displayed greater coordination for infant speech-related vocalizations, adults adapted the hierarchical clustering of their vocalizations to match that of infants, and each of the three coordination patterns had unique associations with infant age. Altogether, our results indicate that vocal coordination between infants and adults is multifaceted, suggesting a complex relationship between vocal coordination and the development of vocal communication.

Keywords: coordination patterns; hierarchical clustering; prelinguistic vocalizations; vocal interaction; volubility.

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Figures

A1
A1
Interevent interval (IEI) probability density functions for all recordings for each vocalization type, plotted in logarithmic coordinates using logarithmic binning. Dashed lines show idealized slope of -2.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic depiction of procedure of AF analysis at three timescales (~7 minutes, ~30 minutes, ~60 minutes). (A-C) Vocalization events are counted within each timescale window. Each vertical line is an acoustic onset for one of the three vocalization types: (A) Infant speech-related, (B) Infant non-speech-related, and (C) Adult. The black, grey, and white rectangles indicate long (~60 minutes), medium (~30 minutes), and short timescales (~7 minutes), respectively. Notice at each of the three timescales, there are clusters of onsets. AF variance is derived from computing the normalized squared difference of onset frequencies between adjacent time windows for the three timescales. AF variance is a measure of the departure from an equidistributed distribution of acoustic onsets. (D) The estimates of hierarchical clustering of vocalization types. The slope α, of the log(AF) vs. log(T) curve estimates the scaling of AF variance across scales. The dotted line indicates a slope of 0, which is evidence for a random (Poisson process) vocalization event series. The other three curves have slopes closer to 1, indicating hierarchical clustering.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Mean AF functions for adult and infant vocalizations, with standard error bars. (B) Scatterplot of each recording’s A(T) values.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Diagonal cross-recurrence profile (DCRP) averaged across all vocalization types. (Left) Average DCRPs before normalization. (Right) Average DCRPs normalized for shuffled DCRPs.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(Top row) Cluster-based vocal coordination results for Adult and (left to right) Infant-combined, Infant-speech-related, and Infant-non-speech-related. (Bottom row) Rate-based vocal coordination results. All variables are standardized. Each circle represents an individual recording.
Figure 5
Figure 5
(Top row) Similarity Score (SS) results for (left to right) Infant-combined hierarchical clustering estimates, speech-related hierarchical clustering estimates, and non-speech-related hierarchical clustering estimates as a function of infant age. (Bottom row) SS results for (left to right) infant-combined volubility, speech-related volubility, and non-speech-related volubility as a function of infant age. Note. AF and Volubility SS axes have different ranges.
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