USING AN EYE-TRACKER IN THE STUDY OF PHONEMIC HEARING INFANTS
– A COMPARISION RESEARCH METHODS
Agnieszka Ignaczewska
(1)*, Joanna Dreszer
(1,3), Bibianna Bałaj
(1,3), Jacek Matulewski
(2, 3), Rafał Linowiecki
(2), Bartosz Rafał
(1), Włodzisław Duch
(2, 3)(1) Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Instytut of Philosophy, (2) Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Department of Physics (3) Centre for Modern Interdisciplinary Technologies in Toruń ,
*a.ignaczewska@gmail.com
INTRODUCTION
Number of studies shows that preverbal infants differentiate the speech sounds that occur in both their native language and foreign languages (Kuhl 2003).
With child development, differentiation of some of the sounds disappear and some will be intensified. Confirmation of this assumptionis hindered by a technical problems.
The test requires the infant to maintain long state of focus. The child, however, quickly distracted attention and going to recalibrate eye-tracker (ET).
MAIN
Our results confirm that the preverbal infants differentiate speech sound occurring both in their native language and foreign languages.
Method 2A is more attractive to infants due to its dynamism and diversity of visual stimuli.
100% of respondents using 2A gave results usable for analysis, where in the case of ELMO this was only 33%.
I In comparison with the ELMO, method 2A is shorter and attracts more attention.
METHODS
• The study invited parents with children (N = 12, including 5 girls) aged between 7 and 12 month old (M ≈ 9.2 SD≈ 1.6) with wich:
• N = 6, including 3 girls; 8-11 mths (M ≈ 9.2 ≈ 1 SD) by ELMO
• N = 6, including 2 girls; 7-12 mths (M ≈ 9.2 ≈ 2.1 SD) by 2A.
• Use of two methods based on anticipation the position appears of visual object depending on the presented stimulus sound (Czoska 2015).
• In order to validate predictions, a procedure using ET SMI and our in-house developed platform Gaze Controlled Application Framework (GCAF)*.
• The languages stimuli were French and Polish pseudo-words sounding as follows:
feda, feud, feufa, feufou.
TASKS
• Tutaj wymień metody i umieść opisy
• Metoda 1
• Metoda 2
• Metoda 3
SCAN PATH EXAMPLES
During and after the sound stimulus
RESULTS
LITERATURE
1. Albareda-Castellot B, Pons F, Sebastián-Gallés N (2011) The aqusitionof phonetic categories in bilingual infants. New data from an anticipatory eye movement paradigm: Developmental Science 14(2): 395-401
2. Bjerva J, Marklund E, Engdahl J, Lacerda F (2011) Anticipatory looking in infants and adults: Digital Vetenska [online:] http://www.diva-
portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A447545&dswid=-9203 (2015-10-18) 3. Czoska A, Klessa K, Karpiński M (2015) Polish infant-directed speech vs. adult-
directed speech: selected acoustic-phonetic differences: IPA [online:]
https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs
proceedings/ICPhS2015/Papers/ICPHS0707.pdf (2015-10-18)
4. Kuhl PK, Tsao FM, Liu HM (2003) Foreign-language experience in infancy. Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning: PNAS
[online:] http://www.pnas.org/content/100/15/9096.long (2015-10-18)
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
TRIAL
Ratio of WhiteSpace to AOI
AOI
White Space
0,15
0,21 0,35
0,38 0,47
0,57
0,47 0,48
S1 S2
0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6
Right reactions
ELMO_all 2A_all ELMO_AOI 2A_AOI
220,62
250,49 246,55
263,41
216,58
231,41 257,06
279,53
S1 S2
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Duration of fixation [ms]
ELMO_all 2A_all ELMO_AOI 2A_AOI
CONCLUSIONS
The conducted research have two main objectives:
• (1) replication of the results obtained in studies of US and Japanese infants (Kuhl 2003)
• (2) comparism of the effectiveness of two methods 2AFC type (two-alternative forced choice) (Albareda Castellot vs. Bjerva) allowing at the earliest possible diagnosis of differentiation of speech sounds.
The research is part of a project NeuroPerKog: the development of phonemic hearing and working memory in infants and children,
funded by a grant from the National Science Centre in the competition Symfonia No. 1, No. agreement: UMO-2013/08 / W / HS6 / 0033.
All parents gave informed consent (Boiethics Committee gave approved for research No. agreement : KB 79/2013)
*What is GCAF?
GCAF is a platform for easy building of customized applications controlled by gaze. It is possible due to new interface description language, namely Gaze Interaction Markup Language (GIML) based on human readable XML files.
The GCAF allows collection of events history and basic statistical analysis. Data containing complete information including an analysis of eye movement and can be exported to common formats such as CSV, XML or plain text. There is no need to use additional software.
It is also possible to record a sequence of screenshots or video of test.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for help from Magdalena Szmytke, Ewa Ratajczak, Magdalena Kmiecik, Julia Stępińska. I also wanted to thank the entire group of ”BabyLab Team”.
