Sounds In Children Research Articles

ZCHSound: Open-Source ZJU Paediatric Heart Sound Database With Congenital Heart Disease.

From 2020 to 2022, we collaborated with experienced cardiac surgeons from three general children's hospitals to collect heart sound signals from 1259 participants using electronic stethoscopes. To ensure the accuracy of the labels, the labels for all data were confirmed by two cardiac experts. To establish the baseline of ZCHsound, we extracted 84 features and used machine learning models to evaluate the performance of the classification task. The ZCHSound database was divided into two datasets: one is a high-quality, filtered clean heart sound dataset, and the other is a low-quality, noisy heart sound dataset. In the evaluation of the high-quality dataset, our random forest ensemble model achieved an F1 score of 90.3% in the classification task of normal and pathological heart sounds. This study has successfully established a large-scale, high-quality, rigorously standardized pediatric CHD sound database with precise disease diagnosis. This database not only provides important learning resources for clinical doctors in auscultation knowledge but also offers valuable data support for algorithm engineers in developing intelligent auscultation algorithms.

Following the sounds of children’s “voices”: A researcher’s portfolio

Herein, I explore the meanings of the oft-used phrase “children’s voices.” The phrase is seldom defined in the literature on children’s language, oral and written. And yet, studying those voices has been fronted as a key methodological tool allowing insights into concerns about equity and the erasure of “nonmainstream” children’s communicative resources. Thus, this essay examines the professional use of “children’s voices” by taking readers on a voice-filled journey through time and space as I consider literally how this unstable but valuable phrase (e.g., “children’s voices”) is used to index some quality of children’s language use, especially their multimodal composing. First, I report on a literature analysis, focused on a relatively recent decade of articles from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)’s journal focused on children, Language Arts (the decade beginning in 2010). Although it proved to be a relative rarity to identify an author defining “children’s voices,” this project phase was invaluable for developing a taxonomy of non-rigidified but still differentiated categories for the meaning of “children’s voices.” Next, to clarify this unstable but useful taxonomy, I examined my ethnographic reports written over 46 years of studying children’s talk and writing, selecting excerpts from four chronologically organized reports, which were undergirded by different stances toward “children’s voices.” Together they illustrate how going deeper into children’s voices meant expanding the nature of the sociopolitical and cultural worlds enacted, sustained, or interrupted by children’s contextualized voices. As Hymes said many years ago, to understand voice and how it figures into equity issues in education, one needs ethnographic context. I aim to suggest why clarity about voice matters theoretically, politically, and pedagogically if we are to understand children’s composing of both texts and themselves as participants in a shared world.

Effect of different personal protective equipment on sound discrimination in children using unilateral cochlear implants during the COVID-19 pandemic

ObjectivesThe COVID-19 pandemic obliged people to wear personal protective equipment (PPEs), which can harm verbal communication and speech intelligibility. The first aim was to study the impact of wearing PPEs on the voice and speech parameters of phoniatricians during therapy sessions. The second aim was to study the effect of phoniatricians wearing these PPEs on auditory discrimination of the Ling’s six sounds in children using unilateral cochlear implants.MethodsThe study was a case–control one, done in the phoniatrics outpatient clinics at Beni-Suef University and Cairo University hospitals. Four phoniatricians participated in this study, and the Dr. Speech software analyzed their speech and voice parameters during utterance of the Ling’s six sounds. Each phoniatrician uttered each Ling sound individually four times to assess fundamental frequency and intensity: first time without wearing any mask, second time while wearing a surgical mask, third time while wearing a face shield, and fourth time while wearing an N95 mask. The study also included forty patients using unilateral cochlear implants (group A) and forty children with normal peripheral hearing (group B). The phoniatricians again uttered the Ling’s six sounds to assess auditory discrimination in both groups. This subjective auditory discrimination was also tested in both groups four times: first time without wearing any mask, second time while wearing a surgical mask, third time while wearing a face shield, and fourth time while wearing an N95 mask.Results and conclusionThe intensity of Ling’s six sounds was significantly lowest in the face shield. Regardless of the PPE type, patients with unilateral cochlear implants showed less consonant discrimination of (mm) sound. Surgical masks and N95 provided the best acoustic performance, while face shields had the worst.

Aesthetic flux: inquiring into the sensuous dynamics of children, matter and environments with a more-than-human lens

Although sensuous and embodied engagement is an integral part of child–environment relationalities, the intersections of aesthetics, children and environments remain scarcely addressed. As a response, this study develops a concept of ‘aesthetic flux’ to delve into the sensuous dynamics of matter and bodies in the context of a storying workshop in a forest with first graders in a Finnish primary school. An arts-based, post-qualitative methodology guided our analysis of video recordings from the workshop, resulting in visual-sonic montages that draw attention to the intense movements and sounds of children, soap bubbles, air, a research camera and trees. Thinking through the concept of aesthetic flux, our study experiments with the abundance, indeterminacy and potentiality of sensuous dynamics where bodies (human and otherwise) become together and linger. Thus, our study reconfigures aesthetics as a creative and unpredictable force that materialises in both embodied and conceptual ways in environmental education and research with children.

Vocal and Consonant Patterns in Indonesian Children's Songs

As a medium in educational music, the song provides space for explanations related to the sound of the language. Prosody or language sounds have similarities to musical sounds studied in phonology. Thus, the management of language sounds in expressing children's songs can be used to identify prosodic factors in educational music. This study aims to provide an explanation of the prosody of children's songs in the context of educational music and to find out the factors that influence prosody in children's songs, the sound changes that occur, accompaniment sounds that accompany the main sound, and the factors that influence it in the context of music education. The results of this study show the characteristics of vowel and consonant sounds in children's song lyrics and the sounds produced for certain vowels and consonants. The factors that influence prosody in children's songs are the word order in the form of vowels and consonants in each of the lyrics. This is to clearly understand the sounds produced by children and their use in educational music.

Therapeutic Implications of Voiced Sounds in Children with Communication Needs

Children with hearing impairments, who do not receive auditory feedback eventually develop speech impairments. Children with hearing impairments lack the ability to talk even by having normal speech production mechanisms. The hearing-impaired child's articulation, accuracy, stress, and intonation patterns are all impacted even if he/she attempts to speak by visualizing lip movements because they are unable to distinguish vowels and consonants with tongue movement concealed in the mouth, nor they are able to understand variations in pitch or intensity of speech. Individuals with hearing impairments may receive auditory, tactile, or visual input, contingent on the degree of their disability. This research is dedicated for developing preliminary systems for teaching. These systems can be created using feedback of articulatory parameters or feedback of acoustic parameters, such as fundamental frequency, speech intensity, and spectral features. Data from speech language pathologists were collected from 20 children with and without speech impairments, aged 5 to 8 using picture naming tasks. The statistical analysis on voiced samples /pha/, /mha/, /tha/ relived the significant variation between children with and without hearing impairments.

Development of Environmental Sound Perception in Children with Cochlear Implant within 4 Months of Implantation.

The aim of the study was (1) to investigate the development of identification of environmental sounds in children with Cochlear Implantation (CI) within four months from switch on (i.e. at 0, 2 and 4 months) and (2) to see the effect of family type in the perception of environmental sounds. A longitudinal study design was utilized on a total of 18 children using CI within the chronological age range of 3 to 7 years. All participants underwent a closed set test of Environmental Sound Perception (ESP) to measure the longitudinal outcomes of ESP, at 0 (within 1 week of switch on), 2 months and 4 months of implant age. They were asked to identify the sounds by pointing at the picture representing the sound. Results using One-way and Two-way ANOVA demonstrated that at 0 month of implant age, the scores were 0%. At 2 months of implant age the scores ranged from 0 to 25% and at 4th month the scores ranged from 0 to 40%. There was a statistically significant improvement observed in ESP at every 2 months of testing from 0 to 4 months of implant age. However, effect of family type revealed no significant differences between the performances across the implant age. The current study reveals that identification of environmental sounds are one of the foremost benefits and early outcomes of CI in children. The perception of environmental sounds are constantly but gradually developing with increasing implant age. This information is useful to predict the performance of CI during rehabilitation and to set the therapy goals accordingly.

Auditory Perceptual Judgement and Acoustical Study of Liquid Sounds in Children Aged 4~6 Years According to Clinical Experience

Purpose: This study examines whether there are differences in the auditory perceptual evaluation of speech produced by children according to the listener’s clinical experience and seeks to find acoustic correlates. Methods: Fifteen speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and 15 students listened to Korean liquids produced by children aged 4 to 6 years and assessed them using a 5-point Likert scale. The relationship between auditory perceptual evaluation and acoustic variables was analyzed. Results: First, there is a difference in auditory perception scores between laterals and flaps at different ages within 4 to 6 years, and there is a difference in auditory perception scores depending on the vowel environment. Second, the SLP group’s auditory-perceptual evaluation was consistent with the child’s general laterals and flaps development pattern, while the student group’s auditory-perceptual evaluation differed from the laterals and flaps development. Third, in the regression analysis, a higher spectral slope was associated with higher auditory perceptual evaluation in the SLP’s data. Conclusion: It was confirmed that clinical experience plays a quite important role in auditory perceptual evaluation. However, various follow-up studies are needed to enhance the accuracy of these evaluations.

Prevalence of Temporomandibular Disorders Based on a Shortened Symptom Questionnaire of the Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders and Its Screening Reliability for Children and Adolescents Aged 7-14 Years.

The prevalence and adequacy of diagnostic approaches for temporomandibular disorders (TMD) in children and adolescents are still matters of debate. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of TMD and oral habits in children and adolescents aged 7-14 years and evaluate the consistency between self-reported TMD symptoms and clinical findings using a shortened Axis I of Diagnostic Criteria for TMD (DC/TMD). Children (aged 7-10) and adolescents (aged 11-14) of both sexes were invited to participate in this study (n = 1468). Descriptive statistics for all observed variables and Mann-Whitney U-Tests for the clinical examination were performed. A total of 239 subjects participated in the study (response rate 16.3%). The self-reported prevalence of TMD was found to be 18.8%. The most frequently reported oral habit was nail biting (37.7%), followed by clenching (32.2%) and grinding (25.5%). Self-reported headache increased with age, while clenching and grinding decreased. Based on the answers to the DC/TMD Symptom Questionnaire, subgroups of asymptomatic and symptomatic participants (n = 59; 24.7%) were established and randomly selected for the clinical examination (f = 30). The shortened Symptom Questionnaire showed a sensitivity of 0.556 and a specificity of 0.719 for pain during the clinical examination. Although the Symptom Questionnaire exhibited high specificity (0.933), its sensitivity (0.286) for temporomandibular joint sounds was low. Disc displacement with reduction (10.2%) and myalgia (6.8%) were the most common diagnoses. In conclusion, the self-reported prevalence of TMD in children and adolescents in this study was comparable to that reported in the literature for adults. However, the accuracy of the shortened Symptom Questionnaire as a screening tool for TMD-related pain and jaw sounds in children and adolescents was found to be low.

Effects of soundscape on Chinese children's social interaction measured by self-reported behavioral expectations

Soundscape research has achieved some progress in enhancing the quality of urban space to support mixed uses. However, there is little evidence of promoting individual development and social relationship. Accordingly, the present study investigated the effects of soundscape on children's social interaction measured by self-reported behavioral expectations (Interaction, Nonparticipation, Avoiding) in the laboratory settings. Environmental exposure conditions were eight soundscape stimuli and one control condition (No sound), presented alongside visual recordings from a schoolyard or an urban park. Results showed that the soundscapes had significant effects on children's behavioral expectations and these effects did not differ significantly between the schoolyard and the urban park. Compared to No sound, Children's sounds and Nature sounds predisposed children to interactions, while Animal sounds and Classical music elevated children's intention to stay alone in the environment. Comparisons to the control group aside, correspondence analyses suggested the relationships between various soundscapes and behavioral expectations categories: Human movement sounds, Children's sounds, Adults' sounds, and Nature sounds were associated with Interaction; Animal sounds and Classical music were associated with Nonparticipation; Motorized transport sounds and Electro-mechanical sounds were associated with Avoiding. These findings on children's behavioral expectations indicate that the soundscape can influence children's decisions about contact and interaction with others in the environment, thereby fostering or impeding children from establishing and maintaining social relationships.

Evaluation of the heart sounds in children using a Doppler Phonolyser

BackgroundHeart auscultation is an easy and inexpensive tool for early diagnosis of congenital heart defects. In this regard, a simple device which can be used easily by physicians for heart murmur detection will be very useful. The current study was conducted to evaluate the validity of a Doppler-based device named “Doppler Phonolyser” for the diagnosis of structural heart diseases in pediatric patients. In this cross-sectional study, 1272 patients under 16 years who were referred between April 2021 and February 2022, to a pediatric cardiology clinic in Mofid Children Hospital, Tehran, Iran, were enrolled. All the patients were examined by a single experienced pediatric cardiologist using a conventional stethoscope at the first step and a Doppler Phonolyser device at the second step. Afterward, the patient underwent trans-thoracic echocardiography, and the echocardiogram results were compared with the conventional stethoscope as well as the Doppler Phonolyser findings.ResultsSensitivity of the Doppler Phonolyser for detecting congenital heart defects was 90.5%. The specificity of the Doppler Phonolyser in detecting heart disease was 68.9% in compared with the specificity of the conventional stethoscope, which was 94.8%. Among the most common congenital heart defects in our study population, the sensitivity of the Doppler Phonolyser was 100% for detection of tetralogy of Fallot (TOF); In contrast, sensitivity of both the conventional stethoscope and the Doppler Phonolyser was relatively low for detecting atrial septal defect.ConclusionsDoppler Phonolyser could be useful as a diagnostic tool for the detection of congenital heart defects. The main advantages of the Doppler Phonolyser over the conventional stethoscope are no need for operator experience, the ability to distinguish innocent murmurs from the pathologic ones and no effect of environmental sounds on the performance of the device.

Speech perception and children with speech sound disorder: An assessment of non-errored speech sounds

Previous studies assessing speech perception in children with speech sound disorder (SSD) suggest inconsistent, if any, differences from typically-developing peers (TD). However, others suggest that children with SSD perceive inaccurate productions as acceptable variants of a sound. Currently, limited research explores speech perception of non-errored sounds in children with SSD compared to TD peers. This study assesses how distributional characteristics of naturally produced child speech stimuli, collected from six 2–3-year-old English-speaking children, might impact listening behavior of children with SSD for non-errored sounds. Stimuli included six exemplars per speaker and VOT categories of short-lag /b d/, short-lag /p t/, long-lag /b d/, long-lag /p t/. For each POA and VOT group, /b d/ and /p t/ VOTs were bimodally distributed (shorter for voiced targets), separated by a minimum 5 ms gap. We will compare perception results for TD children and children with SSD (ages 6;0–10;11). Earlier findings showed high accuracy in adults and TD children for targets with appropriate VOT values with adults slightly outperforming children. We hypothesize that children with SSD will demonstrate similar accuracy levels between groups when VOT values are appropriate for the target, and slightly greater response variability and group differences for inappropriate VOTs.

Processing of task-irrelevant sounds during typical everyday activities in children.

Our ability to focus on a task and ignore task-irrelevant stimuli is critical for efficient cognitive functioning. Attention control is especially required in the auditory modality as sound has privileged access to perception and consciousness. Despite this important function, little is known about auditory attention during typical everyday activities in childhood. We investigated the impact of task-irrelevant sounds on attention during three everyday activities - playing a game, reading a book, watching a movie. During these activities, environmental novel sounds were presented within a sequence of standard sounds to 7-8-year-old children and adults. We measured ERPs reflecting early sound processing and attentional orienting and theta power evoked by standard and novel sounds during these activities. Playing a game versus reading or watching reduced early encoding of sounds in children and affected ongoing information processing and attention allocation in both groups. In adults, theta power was reduced during playing at mid-central brain areas. Results show a pattern of immature neuronal mechanisms underlying perception and attention of task-irrelevant sounds in 7-8-year-old children. While the type of activity affected the processing of irrelevant sounds in both groups, early stimulus encoding processes were more sensitive to the type of activities in children.

The impact of age on the treatment of late-acquired sounds in children with speech sound disorders.

The question of 'when' to treat speech sounds is often posed in the context of normative data. The new normative data suggest that speech sounds such as /ɹ/ and /l/ are acquired earlier than previously thought. The present study compared the treatment of late-acquired sounds between two age groups of English-speaking children: Young children (4-5) and Old children (7-8). Eight monolingual children with speech sound disorder (SSD) participated in the study. Each child received a criterion-based, standardised, two-phase therapy protocol. Treatment efficacy was measured by examining children's accuracy on real world speech probes. Treatment efficiency was measured by calculating the number of sessions required to meet the exit criterion and the mean session duration. For treatment efficacy, young children learned treated sounds as effectively as oldchildren did. For treatment efficiency, both groups required a comparable number of sessions, but young children required longer sessions than old children. The results suggest that delaying treatment of individual speech sounds is unnecessary and that a range of sounds should be considered as potential treatment targets.

Reduced mismatch negativity in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder is associated with their impaired adaptive functioning

Children and adolescents on the autism spectrum display sensory disturbances, rigid and repetitive behavior, social communication problems and a high prevalence of impaired adaptive functioning. Autism is associated with slowed behavioral and neural habituation to repeated sensory input and decreased responses to sensory deviations. Mismatch negativity (MMN) reflects a pre‐attentive difference in the neural response to sensory deviations relative to regularities and studies overall suggest that children and adolescents with autism tend to have smaller MMN. However, it remains unclear whether reduced MMN in autism is coupled to severity of specific autistic symptoms or more generally to lower level of adaptive functioning. To address these questions, the present study used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess whether auditory MMN in 59 children and adolescents with autism aged 7–14 years compared to 59 typically developing children and adolescents were related to specific autistic symptoms or level in adaptive functioning. As hypothesized, the autism group had a lower MMN amplitude than controls. Smaller MMN amplitudes were specifically associated with lower adaptive functioning in the autistic subjects but not in controls while no apparent relationships were observed with autistic‐like social interaction and communication problems, atypical language, rigidity, stereotypy or sensory sensitivity symptoms. Our findings indicate that a blunted response to changes in sensory input may underlie or contribute to the generalized difficulties with adapting to daily life circumstances seen in children and adolescents with autism.Lay SummaryChildren and adolescents on the autism spectrum have a high prevalence of impaired adaptive functioning. Neuroimaging studies have reported that children and adolescents with autism display attenuated brain activity when discriminating sensory input. However, it is unknown whether this attenuation is related to autistic symptoms and/or adaptive functioning. The present study used electroencephalogram (EEG) to show that attenuated brain response in discrimination of novel compared to repetitive sounds in children and adolescents with autism is related to their impaired adaptive functioning.

Digital auscultation as a diagnostic aid to detect childhood pneumonia: A systematic review

BackgroundFrontline health care workers use World Health Organization Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) guidelines for child pneumonia care in low-resource settings. IMCI guideline pneumonia diagnostic criterion performs with low specificity, resulting in antibiotic overtreatment. Digital auscultation with automated lung sound analysis may improve the diagnostic performance of IMCI pneumonia guidelines. This systematic review aims to summarize the evidence on detecting adventitious lung sounds by digital auscultation with automated analysis compared to reference physician acoustic analysis for child pneumonia diagnosis.MethodsIn this review, articles were searched from MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL Plus, Web of Science, Global Health, IEEExplore database, Scopus, and the ClinicalTrial.gov databases from the inception of each database to October 27, 2021, and reference lists of selected studies and relevant review articles were searched manually. Studies reporting diagnostic performance of digital auscultation and/or computerized lung sound analysis compared against physicians’ acoustic analysis for pneumonia diagnosis in children under the age of 5 were eligible for this systematic review. Retrieved citations were screened and eligible studies were included for extraction. Risk of bias was assessed using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2) tool. All these steps were independently performed by two authors and disagreements between the reviewers were resolved through discussion with an arbiter. Narrative data synthesis was performed.ResultsA total of 3801 citations were screened and 46 full-text articles were assessed. 10 studies met the inclusion criteria. Half of the studies used a publicly available respiratory sound database to evaluate their proposed work. Reported methodologies/approaches and performance metrics for classifying adventitious lung sounds varied widely across the included studies. All included studies except one reported overall diagnostic performance of the digital auscultation/computerised sound analysis to distinguish adventitious lung sounds, irrespective of the disease condition or age of the participants. The reported accuracies for classifying adventitious lung sounds in the included studies varied from 66.3% to 100%. However, it remained unclear to what extent these results would be applicable for classifying adventitious lung sounds in children with pneumonia.ConclusionsThis systematic review found very limited evidence on the diagnostic performance of digital auscultation to diagnose pneumonia in children. Well-designed studies and robust reporting are required to evaluate the accuracy of digital auscultation in the paediatric population.

Using an Automated Speech Recognition Approach to Differentiate Between Normal and Aspirating Swallowing Sounds Recorded from Digital Cervical Auscultation in Children

Use of machine learning to accurately detect aspirating swallowing sounds in children is an evolving field. Previously reported classifiers for the detection of aspirating swallowing sounds in children have reported sensitivities between 79 and 89%. This study aimed to investigate the accuracy of using an automatic speaker recognition approach to differentiate between normal and aspirating swallowing sounds recorded from digital cervical auscultation in children. We analysed 106 normal swallows from 23 healthy children (median 13 months; 52.1% male) and 18 aspirating swallows from 18 children (median 10.5 months; 61.1% male) who underwent concurrent videofluoroscopic swallow studies with digital cervical auscultation. All swallowing sounds were on thin fluids. A support vector machine classifier with a polynomial kernel was trained on feature vectors that comprised the mean and standard deviation of spectral subband centroids extracted from each swallowing sound in the training set. The trained support vector machine was then used to classify swallowing sounds in the test set. We found high accuracy in the differentiation of aspirating and normal swallowing sounds with 98% overall accuracy. Sensitivity for the detection of aspiration and normal swallowing sounds were 89% and 100%, respectively. There were consistent differences in time, power spectral density and spectral subband centroid features between aspirating and normal swallowing sounds in children. This study provides preliminary research evidence that aspirating and normal swallowing sounds in children can be differentiated accurately using machine learning techniques.

Assessment of Children’s Temporomandibular Joint Sounds and Ear Pain Associated with Teeth Bruxism

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) sounds in children are frequent with TMJ disorder. In addition to many different findings are designed to assess the relationship between ear pain and TMJ sound with bruxism in children. Aim: This study was designed to evaluate the possible relationship between ear pain and joint sound with bruxism in children. Subjects and Methods: The sample comprised 60 schoolchildren participants between 6 to 10 years of age, of whom 30 children with bruxism as study group G1 and another 30 without bruxism as a control group G2 who were scheduled and randomly selected for this study. Examiner performed assessment who was blinded allocation of the groups. Three readings were performed on each participant. The assessment involved (manual palpation, lateral and dorsal extra-auricular auscultation of TMJ by stethoscope for detecting joint sounds, differentiating between joint sounds) Collected data were checked, entered, and statistically analyzed to test different variables by chi-square test with the level of significance (p< 0.05). Results: There was a statistically significant association between joint sounds regarding bruxism and age, which showed that higher prevalence rates of joint sounds were found in children aged eight to ten years in comparison to those aged six and seven years. However, there was a statistically insignificant association between joint sounds and type in relation to gender and ear pain. Conclusion: The bruxism in children may be associated with the symptoms of joint sounds with the significant association regarding age but insignificant with ear pain.

Assessing the accuracy of artificial intelligence enabled acoustic analytic technology on breath sounds in children

Interpretation of breath sounds by auscultation has high inter-observer variability, even when performed by trained healthcare professionals. This can be mitigated by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) acoustic analysis. We aimed to develop and validate a novel breath sounds analysis system using AI‐enabled algorithms to accurately interpret breath sounds in children. Subjects from the respiratory clinics and wards were auscultated by two independent respiratory paediatricians blinded to their clinical diagnosis. A novel device consisting of a stethoscope head connected to a smart phone recorded the breath sounds. The audio files were categorised into single label (normal, wheeze and crackles) or multi-label sounds. Together with commercially available breath sounds, an AI classifier was trained using machine learning. Unique features were identified to distinguish the breath sounds. Single label breath sound samples were used to validate the finalised Support Vector Machine classifier. Breath sound samples (73 single label, 20 multi-label) were collected from 93 children (mean age [SD] = 5.40 [4.07] years). Inter-rater concordance was observed in 81 (87.1%) samples. Performance of the classifier on the 73 single label breath sounds demonstrated 91% sensitivity and 95% specificity. The AI classifier developed could identify normal breath sounds, crackles and wheeze in children with high accuracy.

Sounds of Children in Worship: Materiality and Liturgical-Ritual Spaces

Bringing together concepts from the fields of material religion and liturgical studies, this article explores how adults and children manage sound-related affordances during worship. The concept of affordances—the possibilities an environment offers a person—is made sensitive to socialization and is related to the concept of liturgical-ritual space. Liturgical-ritual space comes into being through people’s participation in an environment and is therefore defined as a type of lived-in space. The analysis of children’s acoustic participation in two pre-Reformation church buildings shows how sounds made by children contribute to the creation of a liturgical-ritual space. It also brings to light tensions in how adults experience and interpret the sounds that children make. Attention to sound highlights the relationship between people and the material environment and shows that sound matters in Protestant worship with children, not only for the cognitive messages it may convey but for its affective qualities as well.