Research project The impact of vocal affect in infant-directed speech on speech sound category development (VAICA)
During this time, speech sound categories mature through exposure to distributions in the surrounding language environment.
We would like to thank all families who participated in the VEXPO study. We had the pleasure to meet almost 90 families during the study and all of them completed the different study parts. Data collection is now finished.
Stay tuned for updates during the analysis process!
We feature in the program ”Sverige forskar”. Have a look to see how we do research:
UR, The Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company
Stockholm University has produced a short film about the study, which you can watch here:
With a Swimming Cap and Soap Bubbles in the Service of Language Research
Study 1 tests whether vocal affect impacts distributional learning of variation in the speech signal in the immediate context. Study 2 tests whether vocal affect impacts speech sound category development in general. Vocal affect is assumed to impact language development via heightened infant arousal, engaging the infant in parent speech input and thereby enhancing learning, as well as by increasing the salience of information in the speech signal.
The project combines behavioral methods such as the preference looking paradigm, the distributional learning paradigm, and spontaneous parent-infant play sessions at the lab as well as daylong audio recordings at the family home with electroencephalography (EEG) to assess speech sound category maturation in the brain. The project will yield novel insights in the relationship between vocal affect and speech sound category development, with the potential to show how affective quality of infant-directed speech impacts language development at one of its foundations. Being able to show language learning mechanisms in detail is relevant for child development in general due to the universal nature of socioemotional factors.