Semantic Contingency of Maternal Verbal Input Directed at Very Preterm and Full-Term Children.

Nicoletta Salerni,Chiara Suttora

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.800568

Nicoletta Salerni, Chiara Suttora

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.800568

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Abstract

Several studies have testified to the importance of a responsive linguistic input for children’s language acquisition and development. In particular, maternal use of expansions, imitations, interpretations, and labels has been shown to promote both children’s language comprehension and production. From this perspective, the present study examined the semantically contingent linguistic input addressed to very preterm children’s comparing it to that directed to full-term children observed during a semi-structured play session when the children were 24 months of age. The relationships between maternal contingent utterances and children’s communicative repertoires were also investigated. The main results showed that mothers of full-term children produced a higher proportion of semantically contingent utterances than those of very preterm children; moreover, this variable was associated with children’s more advanced communicative-linguistic outcomes. Overall, this study supports the interdependence between mothers’ use of certain linguistic strategies and children’s communicative-linguistic repertoire, extending this evidence to children born very preterm and suggesting the importance of considering the semantic contingency aspect of child-directed speech to support the communicative and linguistic development of these children.

Highlights

Child-Directed Speech: the Relevance of Maternal Input Contingency in Children’s Communicative DevelopmentIt is widely accepted that the linguistic input young children are exposed to contribute to influencing both their language acquisition and development.In this area of investigation, many studies focused on the quantitative aspects of childdirected speech (CDS) showing that one source of variability in language growth is represented by different amount of exposure to parents’ speech directly addressed to the infant (Huttenlocher et al, 1991, 2010; Hoff, 2003; Weisleder and Fernald, 2013).other empirical evidence pointed out that the quality of CDS plays an crucial role in fostering the development of early language skills
Even though the two groups of children were exposed to a similar maternal amount of maternal language, the linguistic input directed at very preterm children appeared to match to a lesser extent the ongoing topic of the interaction
The present work contributes with new data to the understanding of the role of maternal verbal input contingency in children communicative and linguistic development, with a specific focus on the effects of preterm birth on this topic

Summary

Introduction

Child-Directed Speech: the Relevance of Maternal Input Contingency in Children’s Communicative DevelopmentIt is widely accepted that the linguistic input young children are exposed to contribute to influencing both their language acquisition and development.In this area of investigation, many studies focused on the quantitative aspects of childdirected speech (CDS) showing that one source of variability in language growth is represented by different amount of exposure to parents’ speech directly addressed to the infant (Huttenlocher et al, 1991, 2010; Hoff, 2003; Weisleder and Fernald, 2013).other empirical evidence pointed out that the quality of CDS plays an crucial role in fostering the development of early language skills. Responsive Input to Preterm Children can be identified as facilitating language learning at different developmental stages, referring, respectively, to interactional features (i.e., responsiveness, shared attention, and discussion of child interest), linguistic aspects (i.e., phonological, lexical and grammatical levels of complexity, and redundancy), and conceptual content (i.e., topics of conversation). In this regard, the social-interactionist perspective states that language learning is made easier if the content of the adult’s CDS corresponds to the child’s own processing mechanisms, namely, if it is responsive (Girolametto et al, 2002). During the vocabulary development stage and up to the onset of the first word combinations, is well documented that maternal responsive behaviors, defined as contingent, appropriate, and prompt responses to a child’s communicative initiations (Bornstein et al, 2008), can be considered a valid predictor of children’s achievement of several language milestones (TamisLeMonda et al, 2001)

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