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How to measure the onset of babbling reliably?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2011

INGE MOLEMANS ,
RENATE VAN DEN BERG ,
LIEVE VAN SEVEREN  and
STEVEN GILLIS
INGE MOLEMANS
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp
RENATE VAN DEN BERG
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp
LIEVE VAN SEVEREN
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp
STEVEN GILLIS
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp
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Abstract

Various measures for identifying the onset of babbling have been proposed in the literature, but a formal definition of the exact procedure and a thorough validation of the sample size required for reliably establishing babbling onset is lacking. In this paper the reliability of five commonly used measures is assessed using a large longitudinal corpus of spontaneous speech from forty infants (age 0 ; 6−2 ; 0). In a first experiment it is shown that establishing the onset of babbling with reasonable (95%) confidence is impossible when the measures are computed only once, and when the number of vocalizations are not equal for all children at all ages. In addition, each measure requires a different minimal sample size. In the second experiment a robust procedure is proposed and formally defined that permits the identification of the onset of babbling with 95% confidence. The bootstrapping procedure involves extensive resampling and requires relatively few data.

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Type
Articles
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Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , June 2012 , pp. 523 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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