@inproceedings{choy-etal-2026-fine,
    title = "Fine-tuned speech representations track spoken language convergence to adult models in infants and children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing",
    author = "Choy, Landon  and
      Khan, Ali Sartaz  and
      Patrizi, Sonia  and
      Ye, Daisy S.  and
      Gross, Julianna  and
      Cychosz, Margaret",
    editor = "Ma, Martin Ziqiao  and
      Liu, Emmy  and
      Liu, Jing  and
      Chang, Tyler A.  and
      Fourtassi, Abdellah  and
      Warstadt, Alex  and
      Hahn, Michael  and
      Sun, Weiwei  and
      Shi, Freda",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Computational Developmental Linguistics ({CDL})",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Grand Hyatt Manchester San Diego, 1 Market Pl, San Diego, CA 92101",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.cdl-1.8/",
    pages = "27--36",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-428-6",
    abstract = "Language development is characterized by a gradual convergence of children{'}s speech toward adult patterns. Measuring this process has traditionally required detailed transcription and language-specific expertise, limiting scalability across languages and populations. Here, we use fine-tuned speech embeddings to capture this convergence directly from the acoustic signal in longform, child-centered recordings, taken as children go about their daily lives. Using BabyHuBERT, we extracted embeddings from vocalizations of children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing and their female adult caregivers ($>$925 hrs. observation). Embedding distance between children and caregivers decreased with hearing age, controlling for pitch, indicating, as expected, that children{'}s speech patterns converge to caregivers over development. This single distance metric likewise related to multiple standardized measures of speech and language, from infancy through preschoolhood. These results suggest a path toward scalable, language-neutral assessment of spoken language development from children{'}s everyday lives."
}