Codebase and Issue Tracking


childes-db is all open source and is under active development. If you run into an issue, please file an issue in the GitHub Issues page fo the appropriate repository:

Database and extraction method: https://github.com/langcog/childes-db
R package: https://github.com/langcog/childesr
Python package: https://github.com/langcog/childesr
Interactive applications: https://github.com/langcog/childes-db-shiny
Website frontend: http://github.com/langcog/childes-db-website

If you have any other questions about childes-db or want to stay updated on changes to the database, visualizations, or API, join our announcement mailing list.

If you would like to contact us directly, email us at childes-db-contact (at) stanford (dot) edu.


Treatment of CHAT Format


The childes-db project stores CHILDES data in a MySQL relational database. The original CHAT files were converted to XML via chatter, a cross-platform application provided by TalkBank. The XML files were then parsed using the Python xml library and subsequently imported into a MySQL database through Django. The annotations and markers from the original CHAT files that were preserved in childes-db can be found in the table below:




Database versioning


One of the principle design goals for childes-db is to ensure reproducibility in analyses. The database is versioned and both the API and visualizations provide the database version for each analysis. We recommend that authors report both with their analyses. To reproduce an earlier version of the database, previous releases of the database are directly accessible through both the R and Python APIs.