Using Automatic Speech Processing to Analyze Fundamental Frequency of Child-Directed Speech Stored in a Very Large Audio Corpus

Child-Directed-Speech (CDS) is associated with raised fundamental frequency (f(0)). In a previous paper we claimed that f(0) could be extracted from 500 hours of audio recordings using soft computing techniques and that mothers, but not fathers, increase f(0) in CDS. Using an audio corpus more than ten times larger, this paper reports that fathers do raise f(0) but not as much as mothers. The principle finding is a proof of concept: 1) very large speech corpora, unavailable until recently, can be processed using soft computing techniques; 2) the use of very large corpora may force revisions of conclusions based on smaller datasets.