Project description
Decoding baby babble with AI
Babbling is an early sign that a baby is learning to talk. It is also difficult for researchers to study and transcribe every sound after listening to endless hours of recordings. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the AI4ESP project is creating an open-source phone-recognition system for baby vocalisations by combining research on language acquisition, machine learning, and speech processing. Additionally, it presents a method for identifying when infants begin to mimic their mother tongue or other languages in their babbling. AI4ESP will investigate the cultural differences in babbling through recordings across a variety of languages. It will also find early indicators of speech disorders using extensive multilingual data. This instrument will provide clinical understanding of both normal and abnormal early vocal development.
Objective
Babbling is a critical milestone of infant speech development. In only 12 months, infants explore how to move their mouth, tongue, and vocal cords to produce increasingly complex sounds before eventually producing their first words. Investigating early vocal development in both typical and atypical infant populations requires meticulous efforts involving the time-consuming and labor-intensive process of manually transcribing children’s linguistic productions. The present action, at the crossroads between speech processing, machine learning, and language acquisition, proposes to 1) build an open-source automatic universal phone recognizer for infant vocalizations to accelerate language acquisition research; 2) design an innovative measure to assess when early vocalizations reflect the infant’s ambient language(s); and 3) apply the developed methodology to the study of typical and atypical infant populations. By combining large-scale multilingual corpora and state-of-the-art automatic speech processing tools, our first objective is to endow researchers with a novel tool to advance our understanding of infants’ early vocal development. Our second objective is to shed new light on the simple yet controversial question: When do infants start exhibiting distinct babbling patterns across different languages? Beyond its theoretical implications, our proposal holds clinical significance as we will apply the developed tools and measures to investigate early vocal markers associated with speech disorders, constituting our third objective.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
80539 MUNCHEN
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.