Related papers: Emergent Jaw Predominance in Vocal Development thr…
Purpose: The authors' general aim is to use biomechanical models of speech articulators to explore how possible variations in anatomical structure contribute to differences in articulatory strategies and phone systems across human…
By the age of two, children tend to assume that new word categories are based on objects' shape, rather than their color or texture; this assumption is called the shape bias. They are thought to learn this bias by observing that their…
Recent prompt optimisation approaches use the generative nature of language models to produce prompts -- even rivaling the performance of human-curated prompts. In this paper, we demonstrate that randomly sampling tokens from the model…
Despite the parallel challenges that audio and text domains face in evaluating generative model outputs, preference learning remains remarkably underexplored in audio applications. Through a PRISMA-guided systematic review of approximately…
Children in many parts of the world hear relatively little speech directed to them, yet still reach major language development milestones. What differs about the speech input that infants learn from when directed input is rare? Using…
The articulatory geometric configurations of the vocal tract and the acoustic properties of the resultant speech sound are considered to have a strong causal relationship. This paper aims at finding a joint latent representation between the…
A few million words suffice for children to acquire language. Yet, the brain mechanisms underlying this unique ability remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we investigate neural activity recorded from over 7,400 electrodes…
The way infants use auditory cues to learn to speak despite the acoustic mismatch of their vocal apparatus is a hot topic of scientific debate. The simulation of early vocal learning using articulatory speech synthesis offers a way towards…
Predictive coding theory suggests that the brain continuously anticipates upcoming words to optimize language processing, but the neural mechanisms remain unclear, particularly in naturalistic speech. Here, we simultaneously recorded EEG…
The transduction process that occurs in the inner ear of the auditory system is a complex mechanism which requires a non-linear dynamical description. In addition to this, the stochastic phenomena that naturally arise in the inner ear…
We review computational and robotics models of early language learning and development. We first explain why and how these models are used to understand better how children learn language. We argue that they provide concrete theories of…
Adolescence is marked by rapid development of executive function. Mounting evidence suggests that executive function in adults may be driven by dynamic control of neurophysiological processes. Yet, how these dynamics evolve over adolescence…
We use Monte Carlo simulations and assumptions from evolutionary game theory in order to study the evolution of words and the population dynamics of a system comprising two interacting species which initially speak two different languages.…
From crying to babbling and then to speech, infant's vocal tract goes through anatomic restructuring. In this paper, we propose a non-invasive fast method of using infant cry signals with convolutional neural network (CNN) based age…
Speech disorders such as stuttering disrupt the normal fluency of speech by involuntary repetitions, prolongations and blocking of sounds and syllables. In addition to these disruptions to speech fluency, most adults who stutter (AWS) also…
Why do human languages change at some times, and not others? We address this longstanding question from a computational perspective, focusing on the case of sound change. Sound change arises from the pronunciation variability ubiquitous in…
Among the infinite number of possible movements that can be produced, humans are commonly assumed to choose those that optimize criteria such as minimizing movement time, subject to certain movement constraints like signal-dependent and…
This thesis presents a computational theory of unsupervised language acquisition, precisely defining procedures for learning language from ordinary spoken or written utterances, with no explicit help from a teacher. The theory is based…
Learning to read words aloud is a major step towards becoming a reader. Many children struggle with the task because of the inconsistencies of English spelling-sound correspondences. Curricula vary enormously in how these patterns are…
The way speakers articulate is well known to be variable across individuals while at the same time subject to anatomical and biomechanical constraints. In this study, we ask whether articulatory strategy in vowel production can be…