The Human Speechome Project (" speechome" as an approximate rhyme for "

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ...

") is an effort to closely observe and model the language acquisition of a child over the first three years of life. The project was conducted at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

's Media Laboratory by the Associate Professor Deb Roy with an array of technology that is used to comprehensively but unobtrusively observe a single child – Roy's own son – with the resulting data being used to create

computational model A computational model uses computer programs to simulate and study complex systems using an algorithmic or mechanistic approach and is widely used in a diverse range of fields spanning from physics, chemistry and biology to economics, psychology, ...

s to yield further insight into language acquisition.

Detail

Most studies of human speech acquisition in children have been done in laboratory settings and with sampling rates of only a couple of hours per week. The need for studies in the more natural setting of the child's home, and at a much higher sampling rate approaching the child's total experience, led to the development of this project concept. A digital network consisting of eleven video cameras, fourteen microphones, and an array of data capture hardware was installed in the home of the subject. A cluster of ten computers and audio samplers is located in the basement of the house to capture the data. Data from the cluster is moved manually to the MIT campus as necessary for storage in a one-million-gigabyte (one-petabyte) storage facility. To provide control of the observation system to the occupants of the house, eight touch-activated displays were wall-mounted throughout the house to allow for stopping and starting video and or audio recording, and also erase any number of minutes permanently from the system. Audio recording was turned off throughout the house at night after the child was asleep."Watch language grow in the 'Baby Brother' house"
2006, New Scientist Data was gathered at an average rate of 200 gigabytes per day, necessitating the development of sophisticated data-mining tools to reduce analysis efforts to a manageable level, and transcribing significant speech added a labor-intensive dimension.

References

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External links

Deb Roy's MIT home page

(draft), Steven Pinker of MIT.

Language acquisition Massachusetts Institute of Technology