arXiv subjects

Lynn K. Perry

Publications and source records attributed to Lynn K. Perry.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

ChildVox: A Speech, Audio, and Large Audio-Language Model Benchmark in Understanding and Characterizing Sound across Childhood

We present ChildVox, a novel benchmark for characterizing the diverse acoustic signals through which children communicate. Specifically, ChildVox follows the full developmental trajectory from birth through school age, covering physiological sounds, non-linguistic vocalizations, canonical syllables, and spoken language. ChildVox integrates more than 20 sub-tasks across 17 child-centered audio and speech datasets, enabling systematic cross-corpus and cross-domain comparison. We evaluate a representative range of audio and speech foundation models, including self-supervised, ASR-oriented, and large audio-language models, on tasks including physiological sound classification, vocalization and canonical syllables modeling, and speech quality assessment and recognition. Benchmark results show that ChildVox provides a suite of high-performance models in recognizing a wide range of acoustic signals from children, supporting downstream applications such as characterizing children's language levels and tracking speech production with age.

cs.SD↗

arXiv2025

Alignment Phase Transition in Socially Driven Motion

Collective human movement is a hallmark of complex systems, exhibiting emergent order across diverse settings, from pedestrian flows to biological collectives. In high-speed scenarios, alignment interactions ensure efficient flow and navigation. In contrast, alignment in low-speed, socially engaged contexts emerges not from locomotion goals but from interpersonal interaction. Using high-resolution spatial and orientation data from preschool classrooms, we uncover a sharp, distance-dependent transition in pairwise alignment patterns that reflects a spontaneous symmetry breaking between distinct behavioral phases. Below a critical threshold of approximately 0.65\,m, individuals predominantly align side-by-side; beyond this range, face-to-face orientations prevail. We show that this transition arises from a distance-dependent competition among three alignment mechanisms: parallelization, opposition, and reciprocation, whose interplay generates a bifurcation structure in the effective interaction potential. A Fourier-based decomposition of empirical orientation distributions reveals these mechanisms, enabling the construction of a minimal pseudo-potential model that captures the alignment transition as a non-equilibrium phase transition. Monte Carlo simulations using the inferred interaction terms closely reproduce the empirical patterns. These findings establish a quantitative framework for social alignment in low-speed human motion, extending active matter theory to a previously unexplored regime of socially mediated orientation dynamics, with implications for modeling coordination and control in biological collectives and artificial swarms.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2022

Simulating COVID19 Transmission From Observed Movement: An Agent-Based Model of Classroom Dispersion

Current models of COVID-19 transmission predict infection from reported or assumed interactions. Here we leverage high-resolution observations of interaction to simulate infectious processes. Ultra-Wide Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems were employed to track the real-time physical movements and directional orientation of children and their teachers in 4 preschool classes over a total of 34 observations. An agent-based transmission model combined observed interaction patterns (individual distance and orientation) with CDC-published risk guidelines to estimate the transmission impact of an infected patient zero attending class on the proportion of overall infections, the average transmission rate, and the time lag to the appearance of symptomatic individuals. These metrics highlighted the prophylactic role of decreased classroom density and teacher vaccinations. Reduction of classroom density to half capacity was associated with an 18.2% drop in overall infection proportion while teacher vaccination receipt was associated with a 25.3%drop. Simulation results of classroom transmission dynamics may inform public policy in the face of COVID-19 and similar infectious threats.

cs.CY↗