MIT's Human Speechome Project

For those of you speech folks out there with kids, you've likely never ceased to be amazed and inspired by the fact that your 3 year old child's speech recognition capability surpasses the most advanced speech technology available. Researchers at MIT are trying to figure out just how these little tykes get so good with speech. The team will be monitoring all of a child's entire first 3 years with sophisticated video cameras, etc. in an attempt to understand how he acquires its speech skills.

I wonder if the child will have access to the videos later? Imagine watching yourself learn how to say "mama"? I've noticed with my own children that when they watch videos of themselves as infants, they tend not to be able to filter what they actually remember experiences vs. what they saw on video when they were older. For example, my daughter will say "remember the time I was wearing Daddy's sunglasses in my playpen?", when in fact she doesn't remember it at all, she just remembers seeing a video of it later.

In any case, like a lot of the projects at MIT, this is a fascinating study, and it will be interesting to see what it turns up in the years ahead.

Read the article.