Language use in everyday life can be studied using lightweight, wearable recorders that collect long-form recordings—that is, audio (including speech) over whole days. The hardware and software underlying this technique are increasingly accessible and inexpensive, and these data are revolutionizing the language acquisition field. We first place this technique into the broader context of the current ways of studying both the input being received by children and children's own language production, laying out the main advantages and drawbacks of long-form recordings. We then go on to argue that a unique advantage of long-form recordings is that they can fuel realistic models of early language acquisition that use speech to represent children's input and/or to establish production benchmarks. To enable the field to make the most of this unique empirical and conceptual contribution, we outline what this reverse engineering approach from long-form recordings entails, why it is useful, and how to evaluate success.

中文翻译：

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以儿童为中心的长篇录音逆向工程语言习得

可以使用轻量级、可穿戴的记录器来研究日常生活中的语言使用，这些记录器收集长篇录音——即一整天的音频（包括语音）。这种技术背后的硬件和软件越来越容易获得且价格低廉，这些数据正在彻底改变语言习得领域。我们首先将这项技术置于更广泛的背景下，即研究儿童接受的输入和儿童自己的语言生产的当前方法，列出长格式录音的主要优点和缺点。然后，我们继续认为，长格式录音的一个独特优势是它们可以推动早期语言习得的现实模型，该模型使用语音来代表儿童的输入和/或建立生产基准。