The childesr package allows you to access data in the
childes-db from R. This removes the need to write complex SQL queries in
order to get the information you want from the database. This vignette
shows some examples of how to use the data loading functions and what
the resulting data look like.
childesr from this GitHub repository:# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("langcog/childesr")childesr reads data from the childes-db dataset on
Redivis via the redivis
R client, which is not on CRAN. Install it with:
install.packages("redivis", repos = "https://langcog.r-universe.dev")(A bug in redivis macOS binaries built before 2026-07-31 broke OAuth
token caching, causing repeated browser authentication prompts; current
r-universe binaries are fine. If you see repeated auth prompts, update
the redivis package with the command above.) For headless or scripted
use, you can instead authenticate with an API token, which bypasses the
OAuth cache entirely: create a token under your workspace settings at redivis.com and set
Sys.setenv(REDIVIS_API_TOKEN = "...") before use.
To get a hands on walk-through on how to use childesr to
access childes-db, check out this tutorial.