Children's Language Experiences Research Articles

"HEGA": the Basque version of the PaBiQ parental questionnaire, for clinicians and educators working in the Basque multilingual environment.

In this paper, we investigate the relevance of using a parental questionnaire (HEGA) to gather information on children's language experience in Basque and early language development in order to better interpret language performance in that language. Both this questionnaire and use of language assessment in Basque are needed in the Basque Country, where multilingualism is well attested. The questionnaire was developed after the PaBiQ with additional questions meant to reflect the Basque context, notably its schooling linguistic model. The HEGA was administered to the parents of 186 bilingual children of the Northern Basque Country (age 4;2-9;1) whose language skills in Basque were assessed via a new test battery targeting different linguistic domains (HIGA). Several significant correlations were found between exposure to, and use of Basque and performance in lexical and morphosyntactic production and comprehension. Mixed-effect regression analyses revealed that language experience in Basque, and particularly the fact of being schooled entirely in Basque, were strong predictors of lexical and morphosyntactic outcomes. In contrast, phonological performance, as measured by nonword repetition, appeared to be less impacted by language experience in Basque. Finally, two children were identified as being at risk of language impairment, due to low language performance in Basque despite extended language experience. These results have important implications for clinicians and educators, in particular for detecting language difficulties in Basque-speaking bilingual children. They also show the need for assessing language abilities in Basque for children growing up in a solid Basque-speaking environment.

Context and education affect the quality of parents' speech to children

The present study examined the influence of the context of interaction, parent education level, and parent gender on the quantity and language acquisition-supporting quality of parents' talk with their 3- to 5-year-old children. The conversations of 155 Danish parent-child dyads (41 fathers; 79 boys) in book sharing, reminiscing, and LEGO toy play were recorded, transcribed, and coded for indicators of linguistic and interactive quality. Book sharing and reminiscing elicited higher quality speech than toy play but did not diminish education-related differences in parent speech quality. Higher levels of parent education were associated with higher linguistic quality and linguistic contingency of parent speech. There were no effects of parent gender. The findings support the use of book sharing and reminiscing in parent-implemented interventions to enhance children's language experience, with the caveat that these interventions will not eliminate gaps in children's early language-learning experience associated with parent education.

Profiles of home language experiences of Spanish-English dual language learners in migrant and seasonal head start programs

Children from migrant and seasonal farmworker (MSFW) families are among the most educationally disadvantaged and underserved groups in the United States; however, they have received limited research attention. Using a large nationally representative sample of MSFW children in Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) programs, this study offered national portraits of MSHS Spanish-English speaking children's language experience profiles in their homes. Preschool-aged Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs; N = 280) were classified into two distinct profiles: (1) the Bilingual Exposure group (58.9%), comprising DLLs who had Spanish-English exposure from both adults and children, and (2) the Adult-Spanish, Child-Bilingual Exposure group (41.1%), consisting of DLLs who had Spanish-dominant exposure from adults and exposure to both languages from other children. Compared to the Adult-Spanish, Child-Bilingual Exposure group, children in the Bilingual Exposure group were more likely to come from non-immigrant families, had mothers with higher educational levels, and engaged in more home learning activities. When literacy skills were compared, the Adult-Spanish, Child-Bilingual Exposure group presented higher Spanish letter-word identification skills than the Bilingual Exposure group. No group differences were found in English letter-word identification and bilingual auditory comprehension. Our findings suggest the importance of Spanish language experience at home and call for tailoring educational approaches that consider the diverse home experiences of DLLs attending MSHS.

Learning language in vivo

AbstractIn this article, I advocate for an enriched view of children's linguistic input, with the aim of building sustainable and tangible links between theoretical models of language development and families' everyday experiences. Children's language experiences constrain theoretical models in ways that may illuminate universal learning biases. However, more than that, these experiences provide a staggering array of test cases and demonstrate the stage‐setting effects of situational, familial, and societal context on language use and uptake. Centering on activity type as an entry point into context, I outline an approach—which I refer to as language in vivo—that draws on both big‐ and small‐data methods to generate grounded, informative, and representative descriptions of children's input. Minimally, this approach complements recent work that uses more bundled input measures. Maximally, an in vivo approach could inspire new questions, insights, and innovations to broaden the coverage and application of theoretical models to individual communities and families.

Tangible and digital materials for spatial play: Exploring the effects on parental talk and children's spatial reasoning

AbstractTechnology is transforming children's lived experience with spatial play. In particular, parents may interact with children differently depending on whether they play together with tangible or digital materials. The present research examined whether the medium for play (tangible or digital) affected kindergarten‐aged children's language experience during puzzle play and explored immediate effects on spatial reasoning. Sixty parent–child dyads played with a tangible or a digital set of tangram puzzles for 10 minutes; children received the Children's Mental Transformation Task (CMTT) before and after the play session. Their performance on the most challenging problems of the CMTT improved after tangible, but not digital, play. This effect was related to parental use of orientation and transformation words during the play session and unrelated to the success of puzzle completion. Moreover, we found that the digital interface, specifically the prescribed movements to use the app, affected parental use of deictic words (eg, here, there), and that this relation may be driven by children's production of a pointing‐like action. Together, these results shed light on the interaction between material for play, parent spatial talk and children's spatial reasoning. Practitioner notesWhat is already known The use of touchscreen devices for play by children has become increasingly common. Parents tend to engage children in device‐relevant talk more than task‐relevant talk when using electronic devices. Hands‐on experience with tangible materials provides short‐term and long‐term benefits on children's spatial reasoning. What this paper adds With their parents, children at 5 to 6 years completed more puzzles of tangible materials than of digital materials; the design interface of the digital puzzles affected children's action experience. Tangible materials invited parents to talk about orientation and transformation more than digital materials. The design interface that prompted children to produce pointing‐like gestures invited parents to use more deictic words (eg, here, there). Children's spatial reasoning was elevated after playing with tangible (but not digital) puzzles. This elevation was related to parental talk about orientation and transformation. Implications for practice and/or policy This study sheds light on the considerations for parents and educators when choosing tangible or digital materials for children to engage in spatial play. The results inform about design principles of educational technology for spatial learning by children at the kindergarten age.

Socioeconomic status correlates with measures of Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system: a meta-analysis.

Using a meta-analytic approach, we evaluate the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and children's experiences measured with the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system. Our final analysis included 22 independent samples, representing data from 1583 children. A model controlling for LENATM measures, age and publication type revealed an effect size of r z = .186, indicating a small effect of SES on children's language experiences. The type of LENA metric measured emerged as a significant moderator, indicating stronger effects for adult word counts than child vocalization counts. These results provide important evidence for the strength of association between SES and children's everyday language experiences as measured with an unobtrusive recording analyzed automatically in a standardized fashion.

Overusing the pacifier during infancy sets a footprint on abstract words processing.

Perturbations to the speech articulators induced by frequently using an interfering object during infancy (i.e., pacifier) might shape children's language experience and the building of conceptual representations. Seventy-one typically developing third graders performed a semantic categorization task with abstract, concrete and emotional words. Children who used the pacifier for a more extended period were slower than the others. Moreover, overusing the pacifier increased response time of abstract words, whereas emotional and (above all) concrete words were less affected. Results support the view that abstract words are grounded both in perception-action and in linguistic experience.

Household Perspectives on Minority Language Maintenance and Loss: Language in the Small Spaces

Household Perspectives on Minority Language Maintenance and Loss: Language in the Small Spaces

How ‘shared’ is shared reading: Book-focused infant–educator interactions in long day-care centres

Children's language experiences in the first two years of life are inextricably connected with their current and future language and literacy development. Research has shown that mother–child shared reading of picture books is a practice that can promote this development. Little is known, however, about the shared reading experiences of infants attending early childhood education and care centres. This naturalistic study analysed the reading experiences of 10 infants observed during a three-hour period as they and their educators went about their typical activities in their early childhood education and care centres. Drawing on Halliday's systemic functional linguistic theory, which proposes a non-arbitrary relationship between language use and features of the material setting, this study analysed two aspects of the infants' shared reading experiences: the tenor (roles and relationships) realised in the educators' use of speech function, and the field (the topic or subject matter) realised in the vocabulary used. The manner in which these contextual variables are realised in the adult–child talk during shared reading affects the pedagogical potential of this practice. The findings reveal that the infants had little opportunity to initiate or participate in book-focused interactions with their educators, with implications for their language and literacy learning opportunities.

Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech.

Young children's language experiences and language outcomes are highly variable. Research in recent decades has focused on understanding the extent to which family socioeconomic status (SES) relates to parents' language input to their children and, subsequently, children's language learning. Here, we first review research demonstrating differences in the quantity and quality of language that children hear across low-, mid-, and high-SES groups, but also-and perhaps more importantly-research showing that differences in input and learning also exist within SES groups. Second, in order to better understand the defining features of 'high-quality' input, we highlight findings from laboratory studies examining specific characteristics of the sounds, words, sentences, and social contexts of child-directed speech (CDS) that influence children's learning. Finally, after narrowing in on these particular features of CDS, we broaden our discussion by considering family and community factors that may constrain parents' ability to participate in high-quality interactions with their young children. A unification of research on SES and CDS will facilitate a more complete understanding of the specific means by which input shapes learning, as well as generate ideas for crafting policies and programs designed to promote children's language outcomes. WIREs Cogn Sci 2016, 7:264-275. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1393 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Research Methods in Child Language: A Practical Guide. By ErikaHoff, ed. First Edition. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012. 362 pp. $39.72 (paperback).

Research Methods in Child Language: A Practical Guide. By ErikaHoff, ed. First Edition. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012. 362 pp. $39.72 (paperback).

In This Issue

In This Issue

Bilingual performance on nonword repetition in Spanish and English

Nonword repetition (NWR) involves the ability to perceive, store, recall and reproduce phonological sequences. These same abilities play a role in word and morpheme learning. Cross-linguistic studies of performance on NWR tasks, word learning, and morpheme learning yield patterns of increased performance on all three tasks as a function of age and language experience. These results are consistent with the idea that there may be universal information-processing mechanisms supporting language learning. Because bilingual children's language experience is divided across two languages, studying performance in two languages on NWR could inform one's understanding of the relationship between information processing and language learning. The primary aims of this study were to compare bilingual language learners' recall of Spanish-like and English-like items on NWR tasks and to assess the relationships between performance on NWR, semantics, and morphology tasks. Sixty-two Hispanic children exposed to English and Spanish were recruited from schools in central Texas, USA. Their parents reported on the children's input and output in both languages. The children completed NWR tasks and short tests of semantics and morphosyntax in both languages. Mixed-model analysis of variance was used to explore direct effects and interactions between the variables of nonword length, language experience, language outcome measures, and cumulative exposure on NWR performance. Children produced the Spanish-like nonwords more accurately than the English-like nonwords. NWR performance was significantly correlated to cumulative language experience in both English and Spanish. There were also significant correlations between NWR and morphosyntax but not semantics. Language knowledge appears to play a role in the task of NWR. The relationship between performance on morphosyntax and NWR tasks indicates children rely on similar language-learning mechanisms to mediate these tasks. More exposure to Spanish may increase abilities to repeat longer nonwords. This knowledge may shift across levels of bilingualism. Further research is needed to understand this relationship, as it is likely to have implications for language teaching or intervention for children with language impairments.

A Natural History of Early Language Experience

Talking is important for children, because the complexity of what children say influences the complexity of other people's responses. This article describes how years of focusing on the talk of 4-year-olds in early intervention led to years of observing 1- through 3-year-olds learning to talk during their everyday interactions with their parents at home. Analysis of the observational data revealed how crucial to development is the amount of children's language experience as partners in the social dances of conversation. The parent behaviors observed to support learning to talk have many implications for research and practice.

The relation of birth order and socioeconomic status to children's language experience and language development

ABSTRACTVariation in mothers' child-directed speech and in their children's rates of language development were examined as a function of child birth order and family socioeconomic status (SES). A total of 63 children between 18 and 29 months were recorded in dyadic interaction with their mothers on two separate occasions, 10 weeks apart. The children included first and later boms who came from high-SES and mid-SES backgrounds. Analyses of the children's speech at the second visit showed that the first-bom children were more advanced in lexical and grammatical development than the later-bom children, and that the later-bom children were more advanced in the development of conversational skill. High-SES children showed more advanced lexical development than mid-SES children. These differences are interpreted as the result of differences in language learning experience associated with birth order and SES, some of which were in evidence in the mothers' speech recorded at the first visit. With respect to theories of language acquisition, these findings suggest that language experience plays a nontrivial role in language development, and that the nature of that role is different for different components of language development. With respect to general developmental consequences of birth order and SES, the findings indicate that differences in early language experience may set the stage for later developmental differences, but that when long-term and pervasive differences are observed, as is the case for SES-related differences in achievement, it is likely that there are pervasive and continuing differences in experience.

Deafness, Language Skills, and Rehearsal: A Model for the Development of a Memory Strategy

We review a series of studies that evaluate the role of developing language skills as a prerequisite to spontaneous rehearsal use in deaf populations. We propose a theoretical model that summarizes the contribution of language skills by highlighting the interrelations among age, language proficiency, and automatized language skills. In an initial test of the model, an index of deaf children's language experience was found to be an almost complete mediator of strategy use. Increasing language proficiency, therefore, was implicated as a critical variable in predicting children's spontaneous rehearsal use, minimizing any direct contribution from age per se. In a more direct assessment of the link between general language proficiency and rehearsal use, pragmatic language skills (as measured by the Language Proficiency Profile: LPP-I) were found to be a nearly complete mediator of rehearsal use, with the remaining contributions of age and language experience being nonsignificant. Language proficiency, therefore, was identified as a strong and necessary prerequisite for rehearsal to be used spontaneously as a memory strategy. The additional hypothesis that the automatization of these general language skills, measured by a rapid automatized naming task (RAN), contributes to spontaneous rehearsal was also evaluated. Automatized language emerged as a partial mediator of the language proficiency → rehearsal use relation but additional language-processing variables were implicated. We discuss these findings as they relate to issues around the nature of language proficiency and the identification of those automatized language skills involved in rehearsal.

Input, innateness, and induction in language acquisition

Input and innateness compliment one another in language acquisition. Children exposed to different languages acquire different languages. Children's language experience, however, underdetermines the grammars that they acquire; the constraints that are not supplied by input must be available endogenously, and the ultimate origin of these endogenous contributions to acquisition may be traced to the biology of the mind. To the extent that assumptions of innateness encourage greater explicitness in the formulation of theories of acquisition, they should be welcomed. Excessively powerful assumptions of innateness may not be subject to empirical disconfirmation, however. Therefore, attention should be devoted to the development of a theory of language input, particularly with regard to identifying invariants of input. In combination with a linguistic theory providing an account of the endstate of acquisition, a theory of input would permit the deduction of properties of the mind that underlie the acquisition of language.