Project overview

This page provides an overview of the OvS project.

The overheard speech study aims to characterize the speech input found in children's language environment and to evaluate which kinds of input support early language development. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation Social Behavioral Economic Postdoctoral Fellowship (awarded to Jasenia Hartman, JH) and by the Harvard Internal Research Grant (awarded to Elika Bergelson).

The study consist of a naturalistic and an experimental part.

The goals of the naturalistic part are two-fold: 1 ) to characterize speech directed to and around the child and 2) to evaluate the relationship between overheard speech and children's concurrent and later language knowledge. To carry out these goals, the project leverages data from the SEEDLings corpus, which consist of monthly daylong recordings of children in their homes between 6 to 17 months (for more information about SEEDLingS, see SEEDLingS page).

The goal of the experimental part is to compare children's ability to learn novel words from speech directed to others by using speech stimuli that resemble the characteristics of actual overheard speech.

For more details about the motivation of the project, see Project Summary document of JH's NSF fellowship.

For more details about the methodological approach for each part of the project, see Project Description document of JH's NSF fellowship.

The project summary and project description are located within a SharePoint page with restricted access. To request access, contact lab manager, Michika Ito, or the PI, Dr. Elika Bergelson.