Comments on: Time worms, Blitzscribe and Cognitive Science

Time worms, Blitzscribe and Cognitive Science

cashman — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:10:22 -0800

From the day cognitive scientist Deb Roy and his wife brought their son home five years ago, the family's every movement and word was captured and tracked with a series of fisheye lenses in every room in their house. The purpose was to understand how we learn language, in context, through the words we hear.

In one 40-second clip, you can hear how "gaga" turned into "water" over the course of six months.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:13:12 -0800

not another gaga post, please!

By: longsleeves

longsleeves — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:17:34 -0800

Next, turn water into whine.

By: DU

DU — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:18:58 -0800

Wow. When my first kid went from 2.5 to 3.5, it was an amazing (and amazingly fast) transition in language use. That clip is even faster. It isn't "gaga" to "water" in 6 months. It's "gaga" for about 4 months, then maybe a week of "wawa" then "wata" and "water" right at the end. Incredible.

By: le morte de bea arthur

le morte de bea arthur — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:26:39 -0800

Previously

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:30:33 -0800

All I Hear is Radio...

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:32:40 -0800

My 7 month old seems really into making farting/raspberry noises at the moment. So I suspect a time shifted recording of him would go: pppffttppffttppffftpffftttpffffttppffftttttppppffffftttppftpfptpfptftwheninthecourseofhumanevents Not that we set the bar high in my house, mind you.

By: k5.user

k5.user — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:35:04 -0800

I want to know where they hid the skinner box, out of sight of the cameras..

By: DU

DU — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:36:00 -0800

Project page

By: Diablevert

Diablevert — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:41:37 -0800

What a comfort it is to know that he's taken all the incredible effort and study that went into researching this and furthering human knowledge and has funneled it into a marketing startup. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.

By: The Emperor of Ice Cream

The Emperor of Ice Cream — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:43:19 -0800

I recall reading (I believe it was the book "Next of Kin") about a couple who, as primatologists, decided to raise a female chimpanzee as if she were a human. This included dressing the chimp in human clothes, and not allowing the chimp to meet any other chimps (which seems especially cruel); the anecdote I remember is that they came home one day and found the chimp drinking gin and tonics, reading Playgirl and masturbating with a vacuum cleaner. Of course, it may be I'm misremembering this.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:48:04 -0800

You misremember. It was Playboy.

By: ShooBoo

ShooBoo — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:15:15 -0800

There's also this book Narratives from the Crib about a audio-only recorded infant (which I found through the last two paragraphs in this Slate story).

By: saturday_morning

saturday_morning — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:29:47 -0800

I recall reading Liar. You heard it on RadioLab like the rest of us. what is 'reading'

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:38:01 -0800

I think this was probably more about nerding out and wanting to capture family moments then it was about serious research.

By: Kabanos

Kabanos — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:23:59 -0800

FOR GOD'S SAKE HE'S ASKING FOR VODKA.

By: sonika

sonika — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:48:16 -0800

My first thought, as a nanny, is that I totally can't imagine the pressure of being "on camera" like that all the time. That citizen is totally amazing.

By: tractorfeed

tractorfeed — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:07:50 -0800

What's exciting about this is that (if they can get their transcription-assist software working well enough) it will be a huge corpus of child-directed speech, correlated with the actual utterances of the child. Many studies have shown that what's important to children when they're acquiring their native language is almost exclusively the speech that is directed at them. They don't seem to absorb much at all from tv or radio, or overhearing adult conversations. These data form the basis of analysis for what children are doing when they acquire language. Nativists, who believe that there is some innate structure in the brain which must be present at birth in order to explain language acquisition, disagree with those who believe that language is a wholly-learned behavior. In order to test out theories on both sides, an accurate idea of what the input is to the child is really vital. So as technology develops and gives us access to larger and larger corpora, we are better able to solve these puzzles about how it is that humans become able to speak.

By: webmutant

webmutant — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:54:43 -0800

Please tell me they named him Truman.

By: Brainy

Brainy — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:41:14 -0800

I listened to the 40 second water clip in Safari, turned it up really loud so the girlfriend could hear it, we laughed and were giddy. Then I hit Cmd+left arrow to go back. oh, god. never. again.

By: eritain

eritain — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:05:01 -0800

It's not a perfect fishbowl. They have a shut-off button in each room if they want it, and they can always go back and edit anything horribly embarrassing. The child personally will have periodic reviews and re-give consent, and the whole corpus doesn't come out until final consent after 18.

By: briank

briank — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:45:18 -0800

Please tell me they named him Noam.

By: ocherdraco

ocherdraco — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:39:44 -0800

Just saw the TED talk about this. It gave me goosebumps. Fuck yeah, language acquisition!