Work

An automated pipeline for efficiently generating standardized, child-friendly audiovisual language stimuli

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Creating engaging language stimuli suitable for children can be difficult and time-consuming. To simplify and accelerate the process, we developed an automated pipeline that combines existing audio generation and animation tools to generate customizable audiovisual stimuli from text input. The pipeline consists of two components: the first uses Google Cloud Text-to-Speech to generate audio stimuli from text, and the second uses Adobe Character Animator to create video stimuli in which an animated character “speaks” the audio with speech-aligned mouth movements. We evaluated the pipeline with two stimulus sets, including an acoustic comparison between generated audio stimuli and existing human-recorded stimuli. The pipeline is efficient, taking less than 2 minutes to generate each audiovisual stimulus, and fewer than 9% of stimuli needed to be regenerated. The audio generation component is particularly fast, taking less than 1 second per stimulus. By leveraging automated tools for language stimulus creation, this pipeline can facilitate developmental research on language and other domains of cognition, especially in cognitive neuroscience studies that require large numbers of stimuli. • Creating engaging audiovisual stimuli can be difficult and time-consuming. • Automated tools can simplify and accelerate the stimulus generation process. • We created an automated pipeline to generate audiovisual stimuli from text input. • Audio and visual stimuli features can be customized. • The pipeline can generate animated videos in less than 2 minutes with minimal errors.

Source: Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2026.101674

Authors: Bianca Santi, Matthew Soza, Greta Tuckute, Aalok Sathe, Evelina Fedorenko, Halie Olson

Institutions: McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Harvard University

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,650