| --- |
| configs: |
| - config_name: asr |
| data_files: |
| - split: train |
| path: asr/train-* |
| - config_name: general |
| data_files: |
| - split: train |
| path: general/train-* |
| size_categories: |
| - 100K<n<1M |
| extra_gated_prompt: 'CHILDES-Aligned is derived from the CHILDES database (TalkBank) |
| and is distributed under TalkBank''s terms of use (https://talkbank.org/share/rules.html). |
| Access is reviewed manually. By requesting access you agree to: |
| |
| |
| 1. Use the data for **non-commercial research** only. |
| |
| 2. **Cite** the BEACON paper and **every source CHILDES corpus** you use (see `corpora.tsv`). |
| |
| 3. Follow the TalkBank Ground Rules, including respecting participant privacy and |
| **not redistributing** the audio. |
| |
| ' |
| extra_gated_fields: |
| Name: text |
| Email: text |
| Affiliation: text |
| Intended use: text |
| I agree to the TalkBank/CHILDES terms and to cite BEACON and the source corpora: checkbox |
| extra_gated_button_content: Request access |
| license: cc-by-nc-sa-4.0 |
| language: |
| - en |
| extra_gated_heading: Access CHILDES-Aligned |
| task_categories: |
| - automatic-speech-recognition |
| tags: |
| - speech |
| - child-speech |
| - childes |
| - asr |
| - forced-alignment |
| - timestamp-curation |
| pretty_name: CHILDES-Aligned |
| --- |
| |
| # CHILDES-Aligned: Curated Child-Speech Dataset (BEACON) |
|
|
| English child-speech audio clips with corrected utterance-level timestamps, |
| curated from [CHILDES](https://childes.talkbank.org) with **BEACON** (Boundary |
| Estimation via Alignment CONsensus): multiple ASR systems' word timestamps are |
| aligned to the human CHAT transcripts and fused by consensus to recover reliable |
| utterance boundaries, without altering the original transcripts. |
|
|
| - **Speakers:** target child (`CHI`) only. |
| - **Audio:** 16 kHz mono WAV, one clip per (merged) child turn. |
| - **License/terms:** **CC BY-NC-SA 4.0** (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike), |
| inherited from CHILDES, under the TalkBank ground rules. Cite the source corpora |
| you use — see `corpora.tsv`. |
|
|
| ## Two released versions (paper Table 1) |
|
|
| | | **General** (raw CHAT) | **ASR** (verbatim) | |
| |---|---|---| |
| | CHILDES corpora | 49 | 49 | |
| | Recordings (sessions) | 5,533 | 5,344 | |
| | Child age range | 0;6–14;3 | 0;6–14;3 | |
| | Utterances (clips) | 501,880 | 310,983 | |
| | Audio (hours) | 413.3 | 282.6 | |
| | Words / vocabulary | 2.18 M / 20,581 | 1.63 M / 18,168 | |
| | Transcript | raw CHAT | verbatim-normalized | |
|
|
| Ages use CHILDES `years;months` notation (`0;6` = 0 years 6 months). |
|
|
| - **`general/`** — lossless, general-purpose. All clips keep their raw CHAT text |
| (unintelligibility `xxx`, pauses, `&=events`, terminators, etc.), so it is not |
| tied to any single downstream task: distribution, child-language analysis, |
| custom pipelines. |
| - **`asr/`** — a stricter **subset** of General for ASR training: transcripts are |
| verbatim-normalized and each clip must pass an independent ASR agreement check |
| (drops clips whose audio and transcript disagree). The **ASR version is a |
| labeled subset of the same audio** — no separate audio store. |
|
|
| The ASR subset is derived from General in two passes: (1) verbatim normalization |
| of the CHAT text (`text_normalization.md`), dropping empty / unintelligible |
| (`xxx`/`yyy`/`www`) references; (2) an ASR-agreement filter — each clip is |
| transcribed by a fixed out-of-ensemble ASR and dropped if it disagrees with the |
| normalized reference beyond a threshold. |
|
|
| ## Label schema (`{version}/manifest.jsonl`, one JSON object per clip) |
|
|
| Fields per row, in order: |
|
|
| | field | meaning | |
| |---|---| |
| | `audio` | the clip audio, 16 kHz mono, **embedded** (plays in the viewer) | |
| | `text` | transcript — raw CHAT (General) or verbatim-normalized (ASR) | |
| | `text_original` | (ASR only) the raw CHAT text before normalization | |
| | `start_sec`, `end_sec` | the clip's recovered span on the **original recording** timeline (seconds) | |
| | `duration` | clip length in seconds (equals `end_sec − start_sec`) | |
| | `recording_id` | source CHILDES recording/session the clip was cut from | |
| | `corpus` | source CHILDES corpus — **cite it** (see `corpora.tsv`) | |
| | `child_age` | child's age at recording in CHILDES `years;months.days` notation, e.g. `2;00.29` = 2 years, 0 months, 29 days (`0;6` = 6 months). Empty where the source did not record it. | |
| | `child_sex` | child's sex (`male` / `female`); empty where unspecified | |
| | `child_group` | child's group / clinical status where annotated, e.g. `TD` = typically developing; empty (~80% of clips) where unspecified | |
|
|
| (child fields come from the source `.cha` `@ID` header.) Labels carry the |
| transcript plus minimal participant/provenance metadata only — no per-clip |
| quality/confidence fields. All clips were recovered with the same BEACON |
| configuration (`quad_all` ensemble, conservative 0.5/0.9 consensus, union spans, |
| ≤1 s same-speaker turn merge, +0.5 s padding). |
|
|
| ## Method / provenance |
|
|
| English CHILDES recordings → recording-level QC (drop mislabeled non-English, |
| silent, all-model-untranscribable) → per-recording multi-ASR word timestamps |
| (WhisperX, Parakeet, Canary, Qwen3) → BEACON chunk-DP alignment to the CHAT |
| reference utterances → IoU-consensus fusion → adjacent CHI turns with ≤1 s gaps |
| merged (+0.5 s padding) → clip cutting. The ASR version adds normalization + the |
| ASR-agreement filter. Text normalization spec: `text_normalization.md`. |
|
|
| ## Limitations |
|
|
| - Child-speaker only; adult turns are not released as clips. |
| - Timestamps are model-recovered, not hand-aligned; the hardest child utterances |
| are disproportionately abstained on (no clip) or filtered. |
| - The ASR subset is biased toward judge-transcribable speech; do not use it as the |
| sole source of hard child speech. |
| - English CHILDES only. |
|
|
| ## Citation |
|
|
| Please cite the paper **and** the individual source CHILDES corpora you use, |
| listed in `corpora.tsv` (TalkBank requires citing the corpora): |
|
|
| ```bibtex |
| @article{zheng2026childesaligned, |
| title = {CHILDES-Aligned: A Curated Children's Speech Dataset via Multi-Model Timestamp Ensembling}, |
| author = {Zheng, Haolong and Hu, Yuanzhuo and Liang, Xinyu and Sunder, Vishal and Liu, Dancheng and Xiong, Jinjun and Thomas, Samuel and Kingsbury, Brian and Wu, Zhizheng and Hasegawa-Johnson, Mark A.}, |
| journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.03670}, |
| year = {2026}, |
| url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.03670} |
| } |
| ``` |
|
|
