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Institute for Intelligent Systems

Home Institute for Intelligent Systems Projects iVoc

iVoc

PI: Kimbrough Oller
Co-PI: Eugene Buder

When infants vocalize, parents listen; in fact everybody listens. But what do we hear, and how do we react?

Research in the iVoc project focuses on the categories of sounds that babies
make: squeals, growls, raspberries, and little vowel- like sounds. But these infant sounds are different from cry and laughter because cry is always negative and laughter positive, whereas squeals and growls can show any emotion.

Parents notice not only the emotions but also the fact that these sounds come in repetitive chunks indicating the infant's control over them. These sounds are early foundations for language that no other primate ever shows. And parents react by paying attention to baby sounds and using them as information about the baby's well-being.

The iVoc project studies how baby sounds and parent reactions to them can help us predict a child's development, and identify disorders such as hard of hearing and autism.

Funding:

  • Early Vocal Development and Prediction of Autism. Funding Agency: NIDCD. $3,200,000.
  • Vocal exploration and interaction in the emergence of speech. Funding Agency: NIH, NIDCD. $2,903,000.

Publications:

  • Gilkerson, J., Richards, J.A., Warren, S. F., Greenwood, C. R., Oller, D. K., Montgomery, J. K., Hansen, J. H. L., Xu, D. & Paul, T. D. (in press). Mapping the early language environment using all-day recordings and automated analysis. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology.
  • Belardi, K., Watson, L., Faldowski, R., Baranek, G., Crais, E., Patten, E. Oller, D. K., Hazlett, H., McComish, C. (in press). A Retrospective Video Analysis of Canonical Babbling and Volubility in Infants with Fragile X Syndrome at 9 -12 Months of Age. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities.
  • Abney, D. H., Warlaumont , A. S., Oller, D. K., Wallot, S., & Kello , C. T. (2016). Multiple Coordination Patterns in Infant and Adult Vocalizations. Infancy, 9, 1. doi:10.1111/infa.12165.
  • Woynaroski, T. , Oller, D. K., Bahar, K-K., Xu, D., Richards, J. A., Gilkerson, J., Gray, S., Yoder. P (2016). The Stability and Validity of Automated Vocal Analysis in Preverbal Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Autism Research. DOI: 10.1002/aur.1667
  • Warlaumont, A. S., Richards, J. A., Gilkerson, J., Messinger, D. & Oller, D. K. (2016). The social feedback hypothesis and communicative development in ASD: A response to Akhtar et al. Psychological Science. 11, 1531-1533.
  • Lee, C-C., Jhang, Y., Relyea, G., & Oller, D.K. (2016). Subtlety of ambient-language effects in babbling: A study of English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8, 10, and 12 months. Language Learning and Development. DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2016.1180983 NIHMSID #821602
  • Farran, L., Lee, C-C., Yoo, H., & Oller, D. K. (2016). Cross-Cultural Register Differences in Infant-Directed Speech: An Initial Study. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151518. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0151518 PMC4794163
  • Nathani Iyer, S., Denson, H., Lazar, N. & Oller, D. K. (2016) Volubility of the human infant: Effects of parental interaction (or lack of it). Clinical Linguistic & Phonetics. DOI:10.3109/02699206.2016.1147082, 780747, PMC4902155
  • Oller, D. K. (2014). Infant Vocal Communication: Clues for Emerging Disorders. Seminar for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Orlando, FL.
  • Warlaumont, A. W., Richards, J., Gilkerson, J., Oller, D. K. (2014, July). A dynamic social feedback loop leading to increased child speech. International Assoc. for the Study of Child Language, Amsterdam.
  • Buder, E. H., Warlaumont, A. S., & Oller, D. K. (2013). An acoustic phonetic catalog of prespeech vocalizations. In B. Peter & A. MacLeod (Eds.), Comprehensive perspectives on child speech development and disorders: Pathways from linguistic theory to clinical practice. Hauppage, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. pp. 103-134.
  • Yoder, P., Oller, D. K., Richards, J. & Gilkerson, J. (2013). Stability and Validity of an Automated Measure of Vocal Development From Day-Long Samples in Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder. Autism Research, 6, 103-107. PMC3664259.
  • Warlaumont, A. S., Oller, D. K., Buder, E. H., & Westermann, G. (2013). Prespeech motor learning in a neural network using reinforcement. Neural Networks, 38, 64–75. PMCID: PMC3541464. doi:10.1016.j.neunet.2012.11.012.Oller, D. K., Buder, E. H.,
  • Ramsdell, H. L., Chorna, L., Warlaumont, A. S., & Bakeman, R. (2013). Functional flexibility of infant vocalization and the emergence of language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1300337110
  • Oller, D. K., Niyogi, P., Gray, S., Richards, J. A., Gilkerson, J., Xu, D., Yapanel, U., & Warren, S. F. (2010). Automated vocal analysis of naturalistic recordings from children with autism, language delay, and typical development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(30), 13354–13359.
  • Preston, J. L., Ramsdell, H. L., Oller, D. K., Edwards, M. L., & Tobin, S. J. (2011). Developing a weighted measure of speech sound accuracy. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 1–18.
  • Warlaumont, A. S., Westermann, G., & Oller, D. K. (2011). Self-production facilitates and adult input interferes in a neural network model of infant vowel imitation. Proceedings of the AISB-11 Meeting. York, U.K. Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour.

Presentations:

  • Lee, C-C., Long, H., Jhang, Y., Yoo, H., Chen, L-M., Oller, D. K. (2016). Effects of Social & Non-Social Circumstances on Canonical Babbling Ratios in English- & Chinese-Learning Infants. Poster for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Philadelphia.
  • Farran, L. Yoo, H., Lee, C.C., Oller, D. K. (2016). The Temporal Coordination of Mother-Infant Vocal Interactions Across Speech Registers & Cultures. Poster for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Philadelphia.
  • Yoo, H, Oller, D. K. (2016). Temporal Structure of Turn-Taking in Parent-Infant Dyads: A Naturalistic Study With Zero-Three Month Olds. Poster for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Philadelphia.
  • Long, H., Oller, D. K., Ramsdell-Hudock, H. (2016). Imitative & Vocally Adaptive Behavior in Infants Through 12 Months. Poster for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Philadelphia.
  • Jhang, Yuna, Anne Warlaumont,, Rick Dale, D. Kimbrough Oller (2016). Emergence of Functional Flexibility in Infant Vocalization of the First Three Months. Poster for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Philadelphia.
  • Warlaumont, A. S., Bergelson, E. and Oller, D. K. (2016) Speech and language corpora development. For the Workshop on Corpus Collection, (Semi)-Automated Analysis, and Modeling of Large-Scale Naturalistic Language Acquisition Data, Cognitive Science Society Meeting, Philadelphia.
  • Elisabeth Willadsen, Christina Persson, Anette Lohmander, David Kimbrough Oller (2016) Naturalistic assessment in real time of prelinguistic vocalizations by infants with cleft palate, a methodological study. Cleft Lip and Palate conference.
  • Abney, D., Warlaumont, A. S. Oller, D. K., Wallot, S., Kello, C. (2016). The multiscale clustering of infant vocalization bouts. Paper presentation for the International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans.
  • Oller, D. K. (2015). Clues to emergent autism in infant vocalizations. Presentation in symposium Ontogeny of Autism: identification of very early signs of autism spectrum disorders in human and mice for the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmocology, Hollywood, FL.
  • Ramsay, G., Ghai, S., Patel, S. & Oller D. K. (2015). New approaches to the automated analysis of parent-infant prosodic interaction in all-day recordings of infants at risk for ASD over the first two years. Paper in seminar for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Patten, E., Watson, L., Beranek, G., Poon, K., Belardi, K. & Oller D. K. (2015). The relation of joint attention and canonical babbling in infants with ASD and typically developing infants from home movie analysis. Paper in seminar for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Lee, C-C., Farran, L. K., Chen, L-M., Yoo, H., Jhang, Y. & Oller D. K. (2015). Vocal interactions of American and Taiwanese infants and their parents: Infant reactions to infant-directed and adult-directed speech. Paper in seminar for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Farran, L. K., Lee, C-C., Yoo, H., & Oller D. K. (2015).Mother-infant vocal interactions across American and Lebanese cultures: New findings on infant-directed speech. Paper in seminar for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Yoo, H., Buder, E.H., Lee, C-C., & Oller D. K. (2015).Temporal structure of parent vocal responses to infant cry and non-cry vocalizations in the first month of life. Paper in seminar for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Oller D. K. & Ramsay, G. (2015). Overview: Vocal development in the first year: Laying foundations for discovering clues to communication disorders. Paper in seminar for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Buder, E.H., Yoo, H. & Oller D. K. (2015). Characterizing the acoustic properties of non-cry vocalizations in the first year of life. Paper in seminar for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Oller, D. K. (2015). Foundations for Early Detection of Disorders Through Evaluating Infant Vocalization & Parent--Infant Vocal Interaction. 2-hour seminar for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Yoo, H., Buder, E. H., Lee, C-C., Oller, D. K. (2015). Acoustic Properties of Infant Cry & Non-Cry: A New Look at Distress & Non-Distress Sounds. Poster for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Lee, C-C., Jhang, Y. Yoo, H. Warlaumont, A. S, Dale, R., & Oller, D. K. (2015). Parent & Laboratory Report on the Emergence of Infant Reduplicated & Variegated Babbling. Poster for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Denver, CO.
  • Patten, E.P, Belardi, K., Baranek, G.T., Watson, L.W., Oller, D.K (2015). Canonical babbling and volubility in infants later diagnosed with autism: Early markers for ASD, associations with developmental skills and predictors of outcomes. Paper for symposium titled An Update on Vocal Complexity in Infants and Children with ASD, organized by Paul Yoder and Tiffany Woynaroski, Vanderbilt Univ. for the International Meeting for Autism Research, Salt Lake City, UT.
  • Yoder, P., Woynaroski, T., Xu, D., Richards, J., Hannon, S., Gray, S., & Oller, D.K. (2015) Looking Under the Hood of the Infraphonological Vocal Complexity Score. Paper for symposium titled An Update on Vocal Complexity in Infants and Children with ASD, organized by Paul Yoder and Tiffany Woynaroski, Vanderbilt Univ. for the International Meeting for Autism Research, Salt Lake City, UT.
  • Oller, D. K., Yoder, P., Xu, D., Richards, J., Gilkerson, J., and Gray, S. (2015). Toward improved clinically useful automated vocal assessments for the prediction of ASD. Paper for symposium titled An Update on Vocal Complexity in Infants and Children with ASD, organized by Paul Yoder and Tiffany Woynaroski, Vanderbilt Univ. for the International Meeting for Autism Research, Salt Lake City, UT.
  • Woynaroski, T., Oller, D. K., Yoder, P. (2015). Stability and validity of automated vocal analysis as a measure of vocalization complexity in preschoolers with ASD in early stages of language development. Paper for symposium New Developments in Measuring Communication, Chaired by Nancy Brady of the Univ. of KS, Gatlinburg Conference on Mental Retardation, New Orleans, LA.
  • Abney, D. H., Warlaumont , A. S., Oller, D. K., Wallot, S., & Kello , C. T. (2015). The multiscale clustering of infant vocalization bouts. Cognitive Science Society, Pasadena, CA.
  • Oller, D. K. (2015). Foundations for the language capacity in early human infancy. Keynote presentation for the Gatlinburg Conference on Mental Retardation, New Orleans, LA.
  • Lee, Chia-Cheng, Yuna Jhang, Anne Warlaumont, Rick Dale, & D. Kimbrough Oller (2014). Parent Recognition of Infant Reduplicated & Variegated Babbling. Poster for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Orlando, FL
  • Jhang, Yuna, Hyunjoo Yoo, & D. Kimbrough Oller (2014). Canonical Babbling Judged in Real Time as a Screening Tool. Technical Research paper for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Orlando, FL
  • Yoo, Hyunjoo, Beau Franklin, Yuna Jhang, Edina Bene, & D. Kimbrough Oller (2014). Infant Vocalization in the First Month of Life. Technical Research paper for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Orlando, FL.
  • Jhang , Yuna, Chia-Cheng Lee , Anne Warlaumont, Rick Dale , George Relyea , Li-mei Chen , & D. Kimbrough Oller (2014). Emergence & Development of Functional Flexibility in Early Infant Vocalization Based on Diary Reports from American & Taiwanese Parents. Technical Research paper for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Orlando, FL.
  • Oller, D. K., Betty Vohr, Melinda Caskey, Hyunjoo Yoo, Edina Bene, Yuna Jhang, Anne Warlaumont, Ulrike Griebel, Eugene Buder (2014). Infant vocalization and birdsong: an infrastructural view. Paper for symposium on Speech & song development (Chair: D.K. Oller), for the Society for Neuroscience satellite meeting: Birdsong4: Rhythms and Clues from Neurons to Behavior. Washington, DC.
  • Oller, D. K., Griebel, U., Jhang, Y., Warlaumont, A. S., Dale, R. (2014). The Development of Laughter and Vocal Precursors to Speech, Symposium on laughter at the American Psychological Association meeting, Washington, DC.
  • Lee, C.-C., Jhang, Y., Hsueh, Y., & Oller, D. K. (2014, May). Infant vocal imitation of familiar syllables from live and video models. With U. Mueller (Discussant), Confusion, complexity and neglect: Studying imitation in infancy. Symposium conducted at the 44th Annual Meeting of Jean Piaget Society, San Francisco, CA.
  • Jhang, Y., Lee, C-.C., Hsueh, Y., & Oller, D. K. (2014, May). Behavior matching and Imitation in Infants: definitions and debates. With U. Mueller (Discussant), Confusion, complexity and neglect: Studying imitation in infancy. Symposium conducted at the 44th Annual Meeting of Jean Piaget Society, San Francisco, CA.
  • Franklin, B, Anne Warlaumont, D. Kimbrough Oller (2013). Infant Volubility by Random Sampling From All-Day Recordings. Poster for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Chicago, IL.
  • Iyer, S. N., D. Kimbrough Oller (2013). Vocalization Rate (Volubility) Across Three Social Contexts in the First Year of Life. Poster for the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Chicago, IL.