Infant Vocalization Segmentation: Breath Groups

Last Updated: September 8, 2023

Infant vocalizations are tricky to segment!

A useful way to think about them is in terms of breath groups.

Think about grouping the vocalizations within one inhalation-exhalation cycle together as one segment, and cutting off the segment before the next inhalation.

inhalation/breathing–[one_or_more_vocalizations_while_exhaling]–inhalation

A bird’s eye view of a segmented vocalization would look like the above. The segmentation boundaries are marked with [ ] and the content highlighted in orange.

The onset boundary goes at the start of the vocalization, and the offset boundary goes at the end of the vocalization when what immediately follows is an inhalation.

Be on the lookout for delayed breath releases!

Sometimes infants make a vocalization, hold their breath, and releases their breath with another vocalization. This is still one breath group and should be segmented as such.

Each example audio clip below is one segment.

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

Example 5

Example 6

Example 1

Be sure to keep this “breath group rule” in mind as you’re segmenting infant vocalizations!

When just segmenting based off the waveform, you may want to separate this into three segments.

If you keep breath groups in mind, however, you would segment this into one.