Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-pn7tm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-17T17:00:03.941Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making peer culture audible: long-form recordings and the case for early child-to-child input

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2026

Joseph Coffey  and
Camila Scaff Open the ORCID record for Camila Scaff [Opens in a new window]
Joseph Coffey
Affiliation:
PSL University, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et de Psycholinguistique (ENS, EHESS, CNRS, DEC), Paris France jcoffey@ens.psl.eu camillescaff@gmail.com https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/josephcoffey/home
Camila Scaff*
Affiliation:
PSL University, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et de Psycholinguistique (ENS, EHESS, CNRS, DEC), Paris France jcoffey@ens.psl.eu camillescaff@gmail.com https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/josephcoffey/home Institute of Evolutionary Medicine (IEM), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland https://camilascaff.com/
*
*Corresponding author.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Lew-Levy and Amir note that by adolescence, children shift from speaking like their parents to using the vernacular of their peers, suggesting that children attend closely to linguistic input from other children. But unlike adult input, peer input has been neglected in research. We believe this is due to methodological limitations that long-form audio recordings are uniquely equipped to overcome.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 49 , 2026 , e230
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bergelson, E., Amatuni, A., Dailey, S., Koorathota, S., & Tor, S. (2019). Day by day, hour by hour: Naturalistic language input to infants. Developmental science, 22(1), e12715.10.1111/desc.12715CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bergelson, E., Soderstrom, M., Schwarz, I. C., Rowland, C. F., Ramírez-Esparza, N., Hamrick, L. R.., … & Cristia, A. (2023). Everyday language input and production in 1,001 children from six continents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(52), e2300671120.10.1073/pnas.2300671120CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunce, J., Soderstrom, M., Bergelson, E., Rosemberg, C., Stein, A., Alam, F., … Casillas, M. (2025). A cross-linguistic examination of young children’s everyday language experiences. Journal of Child Language, 52 (4), 786–814.10.1017/S030500092400028XCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Casillas, M., Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2020). Early language experience in a Tseltal Mayan village. Child Development, 91 (5), 1819–1835.10.1111/cdev.13349CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casillas, M., Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2021). Early language experience in a Papuan community. Journal of Child Language, 48 (4), 792–814.10.1017/S0305000920000549CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaparro-Moreno, L. J., Villasanti, H. G., Justice, L. M., Sun, J., & Schmitt, M. B. (2024). Accuracy of automatic processing of speech-language pathologist and child talk during school-based therapy sessions. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 67 (8), 2669–2684.10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00310CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coffey, J. R., Baranov, V., Hu, X., Contreras Suarez, D., Cameron, L., & Cristia, A. (under review). Talking in Timor-Leste: leveraging speaker diarization to study children’s verbal environments. OSF preprint.Google Scholar
Cristia, A., Gautheron, L., & Colleran, H. (2023). Vocal input and output among infants in a multilingual context: Evidence from long-form recordings in vanuatu. Developmental Science, 26 (4), e13375.10.1111/desc.13375CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, H. E., & Cashdan, E. (2020). You don’t have to know where your kids are, just where they aren’t: Exploring free-range parenting in the Bolivian Amazon. In Ashdown, B.K., Faherty, A.N. (eds) Parents and Caregivers Across Cultures. Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
Dykstra, J. R., Sabatos-DeVito, M. G., Irvin, D. W., Boyd, B. A., Hume, K. A., & Odom, S. L. (2013). Using the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system in preschool classrooms with children with autism spectrum disorders. Autism, 17(5), 582–594.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gautheron, L., Rochat, N. & Cristia, A. (2023). Managing, storing, and sharing long-form recordings and their annotations. Language Resources & Evaluation 57, 343–375.10.1007/s10579-022-09579-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilkerson, J., Richards, J. A., Warren, S. F., Montgomery, J. K., Greenwood, C. R., Kimbrough Oller, D., …& Paul, T. D. (2017). Mapping the early language environment using all-day recordings and automated analysis. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 26 (2), 248–265.10.1044/2016_AJSLP-15-0169CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. P.H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Lavechin, M., Bousbib, R., Bredin, H., Dupoux, E., & Cristia, A. (2020). An open-source voice type classifier for child-centered daylong recordings. Interspeech. 10.21437/Interspeech.2020-1690CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewedag, V. L., Oller, D. K., & Lynch, M. P. (1994). Infants’ vocalization patterns across home and laboratory environments. First Language, 14(42–43), 49–65.10.1177/014272379401404204CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loukatou, G., Scaff, C., Demuth, K., Cristia, A., & Havron, N. (2022). Child-directed and overheard input from different speakers in two distinct cultures. Journal of Child Language, 49 (6), 1173–1192.10.1017/S0305000921000623CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pelfrey, G. L., Justice, L. M., Gonzalez Villasanti, H., & Foster, T. J. (2024). Evaluating the accuracy of automated processing of child and adult language production in preschool classrooms. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1322665.10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1322665CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perry, L. K., Prince, E. B., Valtierra, A. M., Rivero-Fernandez, C., Ullery, M. A., Katz, L. F., … & Messinger, D. S. (2018). A year in words: The dynamics and consequences of language experiences in an intervention classroom. PloS one, 13(7), e0199893.10.1371/journal.pone.0199893CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radford, A., Kim, J. W., Xu, T., Brockman, G., McLeavey, C., & Sutskever, I. (2023). Robust speech recognition via large-scale weak supervision. International Conference on Machine Learning, 28492–28518. PMLR.Google Scholar
Scaff, C., Casillas, M., Stieglitz, J., & Cristia, A. (2024). Characterization of children’s verbal input in a forager-farmer population using long-form audio recordings and diverse input definitions. Infancy, 29 (2), 196–215.10.1111/infa.12568CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shneidman, L. A., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: How important is directed speech?. Developmental Science, 15 (5), 659–673.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sun, A., Londono, J. J., Elbaum, B., Estrada, L., Lazo, R. J., Vitale, L., …& Messinger, D.S. (2024). Who said what? An automated approach to analyzing speech in preschool classrooms. 2024 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), 1–8. IEEE.10.1109/ICDL61372.2024.10644508CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, A., Fernald, A., & Diop, Y. (2017). When cultural norms discourage talking to babies: Effectiveness of a parenting program in rural senegal. Child Development, 88 (5), 1513–1526.10.1111/cdev.12882CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed