Vocal communication is tied to interpersonal arousal coupling in caregiver-infant dyads

It has been argued that a necessary condition for the emergence of speech in humans is the ability to vocalize irrespectively of underlying affective states, but when and how this happens during development remains unclear. To examine this, we used wearable microphones and autonomic sensors to collect multimodal naturalistic datasets from 12-month-olds and their caregivers. We observed that, across the day, clusters of vocalisations occur during elevated infant and caregiver arousal. This relationship is stronger in infants than caregivers: caregivers' vocalizations show greater decoupling with their own states of arousal, and their vocal production is more influenced by the infant’s arousal than their own. Different types of vocalisation elicit different patterns of change across the dyad. Cries occur following reduced infant arousal stability and lead to increased child-caregiver arousal coupling, and decreased infant arousal. Speech-like vocalisations also occur at elevated arousal, ..., Experimental participant details
The project was approved by the Research Ethics Committee at the University of East London (Approval number: EXP 1617 04). Informed consent, and intent to publish, were obtained in the usual manner. Participants were recruited from the London, Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridge regions of the UK. In total, 91 infant-caregiver dyads were recruited to participate in the study, of whom usable autonomic data were recorded from 82. Of these, usable paired autonomic data (from both caregiver and child) were obtained from 74 participants. Further details, including exclusion criteria, and detailed demographic details on the sample, are given in Appendix 1 section 1.1. The sample size was selected following power calculations presented in the original funding application ES/N017560/1. Of note, we excluded families in which the primary day-time care was performed by the male caregiver because the numbers were insufficient to provide an adequately gender-matched s..., These data files and associated processing scripts are designed to be run in Matlab R2022a. Only the Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox is required. Details on open-source alternatives to Matlab are given here: https://opensource.com/alternatives/matlab.

学界普遍认为，人类言语产生的必要前提之一，是个体能够脱离自身情感状态进行发声，但这一能力在人类发育过程中何时出现、如何出现，目前仍不明确。
为探究这一问题，我们借助可穿戴麦克风与自主神经传感器，从12月龄婴儿及其照料者处采集了多模态自然情境数据集。
我们观察到，在全天时段中，婴儿与照料者的发声集群均出现于二者唤醒水平升高的阶段。这一关联在婴儿群体中表现得更为显著：照料者的发声与其自身唤醒状态的解耦程度更高，且其发声行为更多受婴儿的唤醒水平影响，而非自身状态。不同类型的发声会引发照料者-婴儿二人组间不同的唤醒变化模式。婴儿啼哭出现于婴儿唤醒稳定性降低之后，并会提升照料者与婴儿间的唤醒耦合程度，同时降低婴儿自身的唤醒水平。类言语发声同样出现于唤醒水平升高的阶段……

实验参与者详情
本项目已通过东伦敦大学研究伦理委员会审批（审批编号：EXP 1617 04）。研究已按照标准流程获取了知情同意书与出版许可。研究对象招募自英国伦敦、埃塞克斯、赫特福德郡及剑桥地区。本次研究共招募91组婴儿-照料者二人组，其中82组采集到了可用的自主神经数据。在这82组中，74组同时获取了照料者与婴儿双方的可用配对自主神经数据。更多细节，包括排除标准与样本的详细人口统计学信息，详见附录1第1.1节。
本研究的样本量依据原资助申请ES/N017560/1中的功效分析结果确定。值得说明的是，我们排除了日间主要照料由男性照料者承担的家庭，因此类家庭数量不足，无法实现充分的性别匹配……

本数据集与配套处理脚本适配Matlab R2022a运行，仅需使用统计与机器学习工具箱。关于Matlab的开源替代方案详情，可参见：https://opensource.com/alternatives/matlab.