Abstract
Abstract The aim of the study is to analyze prelexical speech development in young children with a different socio-economic status (SES): children from low SES backgrounds (lowSES) are compared with mid-to-high SES (mhSES) children. Timing of the onset of babbling and the consonantal development in consonant-vowel (cv) syllables are investigated. Result show that lowSES children reach the babbling onset milestone significantly later than mhSES children. In addition, they use different consonant types in their cv-syllables: they use more glides, but fewer stops, nasals, fricatives, and liquids. These early differences between children of different backgrounds seem to be in line with the literature on SES differences later on in life.
Highlights
Well before children start to produce their first words, prelexical utterances already appear in their vocal repertoire
Since the later onset of the recordings in some of the low SES backgrounds (lowSES) participants could have biased the results, an extra analysis was performed with only the children of the lowSES sample that could have established the babbling onset within the range of the children of the mid-to-high SES (mhSES) sample (CBRsyl and tCBRsyl with P3, P4, P6, P8 and P9 for the lowSES sample)
The aim of the current paper was twofold: (1) establish the age at which children who differ in socioeconomic status reach their babbling onsets, and (2) examine the consonantal repertoire in these children’s canonical syllables
Summary
Well before children start to produce their first words, prelexical utterances already appear in their vocal repertoire. The onset of canonical babbling is a crucial milestone in children’s vocal development: it is considered to be a precursor of conventional words. Babbling is a robust phenomenon in children’s vocal development and a later onset is considered to be a marker of possible language delay (Lohmander, Holm, Eriksson, & Lieberman, 2017; Oller, Eilers, Neal, & Schwartz, 1999; Oller, Eilers, Neal, & Cobo-Lewis, 1998). The onset of babbling in children with a hearing impairment is considerably later in comparison with their normally hearing peers (Koopmans-Van Beinum, Clement, & Van den Dikkenberg-Pot, 2001; Oller & Eilers, 1988; Oller, Eilers, Bull, & Carney, 1985), even if they received a cochlear implant early in life (Molemans, 2011). There is a fairly limited time window in which most children start babbling, though particular groups exhibit (extensive) delays in the onset of babbling
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