Skips and Silences
Skips
Skips are periods of time within a coded subregion that do not contain decipherable language and are longer than 10 minutes. The purpose of having skips was to remove long stretches of time that are not representative of awake, alert time for the baby.
Examples of scenarios that would constitute a skip:
Target child falls asleep for more than 10 minutes of a subregion (even if there was audible language, if someone said something to indicate that the child is asleep, or if the coder heard heavy, steady breathing or snoring, the coder marked the time as a skip)
Car rides with no audible language directed at the target child (car noises make it hard to hear talking, so most car rides are skips)
Target child was left alone for more than 10 minutes without television or a talking toy
Examples that would not constitute a skip:
Target child is with adults but nobody is talking at all, or nobody is talking to the child -- this would not be a skip, because the opportunity for language and codeable words is still available
Feeding time: bottle or breastfeeding (unless the coder thinks that the baby has fallen asleep)
Coding convention (in CLAN file):
Skip time was tallied for a file to determine the number of minutes to be made up from elsewhere in the file. Skip time could be made up with a "make up region" (time from the lower-ranked and uncoded subregions in the file) or "extra time" (time from outside of subregions, sometimes used as an alternative to make-up regions).
Silences
Silences were determined using a silence-finder algorithm <link> before subregions were created in the file. The silence-finder searched for segments of the .wav file that were flat and unchanging. Sometimes, silences overlapped with subregions. If there was a silence that overlapped with a subregion that was to be coded (see above, top 3 or top 4 ranked subregions), then the coder made up the number of minutes of overlap with an equivalent number of minutes of coding with a "make-up region" or "extra time."
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