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Hashoul-Essa L, Armon-Lotem S. The Emergence and Development of Palestinian Arabic Lexicon and Morphosyntax From 18 to 36 Months: A Communicative Development Inventory Study. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2024:1-20. [PMID: 38901010 DOI: 10.1044/2024_jslhr-23-00606] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/22/2024]
Abstract
PURPOSE This study presents a comprehensive exploration of lexical and grammatical development in Palestinian Arabic (PA). The study aims to test the validity of the Palestinian Arabic Communicative Development Inventory (PA-CDI) as well as generate growth curves for lexical and morphosyntactic development, examine the order of emergence of both lexical and morphosyntactic categories, and explore the contribution of demographic and developmental factors to language development. METHOD Data were collected from 1,399 parents of PA children aged 18-36 months using an online PA-CDI. RESULTS The results show that as age increased, so did lexical and morphosyntactic production, along with considerable variability across individuals. While lexical development in PA resembles the order observed in other languages with nouns preceding verbs and adjectives, morphosyntactic development indicates early emergence of verbal inflectional morphology prior to noun pluralization or negation. Age of word combination and health problems are predictive of lexical and morphosyntactic development, and so are parental concerns. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate the potential of the PA-CDI as an assessment tool for lexical and morphosyntactic development among PA-speaking children in Israel. Our developmental growth curves may also be used to identify children at risk for developmental language disorder, particularly those falling below the 10th percentile, thus allowing for early identification and early intervention. The use of background variables, specifically parental concerns, health issues, and word combinations, along with the PA-CDI, could potentially enhance the precision of language delay assessment. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.26026777.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lina Hashoul-Essa
- Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
| | - Sharon Armon-Lotem
- Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
- Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
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Figueroa M. Language development, linguistic input, and linguistic racism. WILEY INTERDISCIPLINARY REVIEWS. COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2024; 15:e1673. [PMID: 38297101 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1673] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2021] [Revised: 11/29/2023] [Accepted: 11/30/2023] [Indexed: 02/02/2024]
Abstract
Language development is both remarkable and unremarkable. It is remarkable because children learn the language(s) around them, signed or spoken, without explicit instruction or correction. It is unremarkable because children have done this for thousands of years without worldwide incident or catastrophe. Yet, much research on this organic developmental phenomenon relies on an empirical falsehood: "quality" linguistic input is necessary to facilitate language development. "Quality" is a value judgment, not a structural feature of any human language. I argue selectively legitimizing some linguistic input as "quality" is possible only through mischaracterizing what language is. This falsehood is also linguistic racism because it is based on a deficit perspective of the early linguistic experiences of a subset of children, specifically racialized children. I explore how linguistic racism stalls our collective understanding of language development and promotes an environment of bad science. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language Acquisition Psychology > Language Neuroscience > Development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Megan Figueroa
- Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
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Levin-Asher B, Segal O, Kishon-Rabin L. The validity of LENA technology for assessing the linguistic environment and interactions of infants learning Hebrew and Arabic. Behav Res Methods 2023; 55:1480-1495. [PMID: 35668342 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01874-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/06/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The present study assessed LENA's suitability as a tool for monitoring future language interventions by evaluating its reliability, construct validity, and criterion validity in infants learning Hebrew and Arabic, across low and high levels of maternal education. Participants were 32 infants aged 3 to 11 months (16 in each language) and their mothers, whose socioeconomic status (SES) was determined based on their years of education (H-high or L-low ME-maternal education). The results showed (1) good reliability for the LENA's automatic count on adult word count (AWC), conversational turns (CTC), and infant vocalizations (CVC), based on the positive associations and fair to excellent agreement between the manual and automatic counts; (2) good construct validity based on significantly higher counts for HME vs. LME and positive associations between LENA's automatic vocal assessment (AVA) and developmental questionnaire (DA) and age; and (3) good concurrent criterion validity based on the positive associations between the LENA counts for CTC, CVC, AVA, and DA and the scores on the preverbal parent questionnaire (PRISE). The present study supports the use of LENA in early intervention programs for infants whose families speak Hebrew or Arabic. The LENA could be used to monitor the efficacy of these programs as well as to provide feedback to parents on the amount of language experience their infants are getting and their progress in vocal production. The results also indicate a potential utility of LENA in assessing linguistic environments and interactions in Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking infants with developmental disorders, such as hearing impairment and cerebral palsy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bonnie Levin-Asher
- Department of Communication Disorders, Steyer School of Health Professions Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.
| | - Osnat Segal
- Department of Communication Disorders, Steyer School of Health Professions Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
| | - Liat Kishon-Rabin
- Department of Communication Disorders, Steyer School of Health Professions Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
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Albert RR, Ernst M, Vallotton CD. Infant vocalizations elicit simplified speech in childcare. INFANCY 2023; 28:322-338. [PMID: 36511880 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12520] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/25/2022] [Revised: 09/09/2022] [Accepted: 11/08/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Infant babbling has an important social function in promoting early language development by attracting caregiver attention and prompting parents' contingent, simplified speech, which is more learnable for infants. Here, we demonstrate that prelinguistic infant vocalizations also create learning opportunities for infants in childcare settings by eliciting simplified and more learnable linguistic information during teacher-infant interactions. We compared the rates and complexity of contingent and non-contingent verbal interactions of 34 childcare teachers during a one-on-one free play interaction with a familiar infant under their care (M = 12.6 months old). As compared to non-contingent utterances, teachers' contingent utterances included fewer unique words, a higher proportion of single-word responses, and a shorter mean length of utterances. Teachers did not change their response length based on infants' syllable type and were equally likely to respond to vowels and consonant-vowel vocalizations. Sources of individual differences in the simplification effect related to infant behaviors and teacher characteristics are discussed. The results parallel previous findings demonstrating the simplification effect in parent-infant interactions. That teachers also show this simplification effect when responding to infant vocalizations suggests the power of infant prelinguistic vocalizations for organizing caregiver attention in various settings to elicit simplified, learnable language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rachel R Albert
- Department of Psychology, Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Morgan Ernst
- Department of Psychology, Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Claire D Vallotton
- Human Development and Family Studies, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
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Zheng Z, Degotardi S, Sweller N, Djonov E. Effects of multilingualism on Australian infants' language environments in early childhood education centers. Infant Behav Dev 2023; 70:101799. [PMID: 36535120 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101799] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/17/2022] [Revised: 11/14/2022] [Accepted: 12/01/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
This study investigates differences in the language environments experienced by multilingual and monolingual infants in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. The Language Environment Analysis (LENA) technology was used to collect day-long audio-recordings from 181 one-year-old infants (age range from 12 to 21 months). We examined whether infants' multilingual status predicts the amount of educators' language input (adult word count, AWC), child vocalizations (CVC) and conversational turns (CTC), as well as interaction effects on AWC, CVC and CTC of infants' multilingual status and other infant, home and ECEC characteristics. Multilevel mixed effects models revealed no main effect of infants' multilingual status on the language environment outcome variables. Instead, infant gender significantly predicted adult word count, with female infants hearing more words from educators than male infants. There was a significant interaction effect between the infants' multilingual status and both their age and length of time in an ECEC setting on child vocalizations. While monolingual infants produced more vocalizations as their age increased, multilingual infants did not show this increase in vocalizations with age. Further, the difference between monolingual and multilingual children's vocalizations decreased as the length of time in ECEC increased. There were no significant predictors of conversational turns. Findings from this study suggest that early childhood educators do not adjust their talk according to the multilingual status of the infants. However, multilingual infants do not increase their vocalizations as their age increases to the same extent as do their monolingual peers. The interaction effect between multilingualism and the length of ECEC attendance also implies that ECEC environments may be particularly beneficial for supporting multilingual infants' vocalizations. This study highlights the need to provide pedagogical support to educators to help them to encourage multilingual infants' vocalizations in ECEC settings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhijun Zheng
- School of Education, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
| | | | - Naomi Sweller
- School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
| | - Emilia Djonov
- School of Education, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
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Effects of maternal depression on maternal responsiveness and infants' expressive language abilities. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0277762. [PMID: 36630343 PMCID: PMC9833548 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277762] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2021] [Accepted: 11/02/2022] [Indexed: 01/12/2023] Open
Abstract
High levels of maternal responsiveness are associated with healthy cognitive and emotional development in infants. However, depression and anxiety can negatively impact individual mothers' responsiveness levels and infants' expressive language abilities. Australian mother-infant dyads (N = 48) participated in a longitudinal study examining the effect of maternal responsiveness (when infants were 9- and 12-months), and maternal depression and anxiety symptoms on infant vocabulary size at 18-months. Global maternal responsiveness ratings were stronger predictors of infants' vocabulary size than levels of depression and anxiety symptoms. However, depression levels moderated the effect of maternal responsiveness on vocabulary size. These results highlight the importance of screening for maternal responsiveness-in addition to depression-to identify infants who may be at developmental risk. Also, mothers with elevated depression need support to first reduce their symptoms so that improvements in their responsiveness have the potential to be protective for their infant's language acquisition.
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Piot L, Havron N, Cristia A. Socioeconomic status correlates with measures of Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system: a meta-analysis. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2022; 49:1037-1051. [PMID: 34180383 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000921000441] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
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.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leonardo Piot
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et de Psycholinguistique, Département d'Etudes cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, France
| | - Naomi Havron
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et de Psycholinguistique, Département d'Etudes cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, France
- University of Haifa, Israel
| | - Alejandrina Cristia
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et de Psycholinguistique, Département d'Etudes cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, France
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Ellwood-Lowe ME, Foushee R, Srinivasan M. What causes the word gap? Financial concerns may systematically suppress child-directed speech. Dev Sci 2021; 25:e13151. [PMID: 34240510 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13151] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/29/2020] [Revised: 06/07/2021] [Accepted: 06/21/2021] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
Parents with fewer educational and economic resources (low socioeconomic-status, SES) tend to speak less to their children, with consequences for children's later life outcomes. Despite this well-established and highly popularized link, less research addresses why the SES "word gap" exists. Moreover, while research has assessed individual-level contributors to the word gap-like differences in parenting knowledge-we know little about how structural constraints that vary according to SES might affect caregivers' speech. In two pre-registered studies, we test whether experiencing financial scarcity can suppress caregivers' speech to their children. Study 1 suggests that higher-SES caregivers who are prompted to reflect on scarcity-particularly those who reflect on financial scarcity-speak less to their 3-year-olds in a subsequent play session, relative to a control group. Study 2 suggests that mid- to higher-SES caregivers engage in fewer back-and-forth exchanges with their children at the end of the month-when they are more likely to be experiencing financial hardship-than the rest of the month. These studies provide preliminary evidence that-above and beyond caregivers' individual characteristics-structural constraints may affect how much parents speak to their children.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Ruthe Foushee
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Mahesh Srinivasan
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
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Lam-Cassettari C, Peter V, Antoniou M. Babies detect when the timing is right: Evidence from event-related potentials to a contingent mother-infant conversation. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2021; 48:100923. [PMID: 33524769 PMCID: PMC7848774 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100923] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2019] [Revised: 12/23/2020] [Accepted: 01/08/2021] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Social interactions are vital for healthy brain development. Burgeoning behavioural evidence indicates that a caregiver who provides contingently timed vocal responses to infant vocalisations provides key support for early language development. Understanding how contingently timed vocal responses relate to neurodevelopment in early infancy is lacking. This study compares event-related potentials (ERPs) to contingent and non-contingently timed vocalisations in 6- and 9-month-old infants (n = 36), and adults (n = 24). ERPs were recorded from each age group while listening to a naturalistic 21-minute recording of a mother playing and conversing with her baby. At 6-months, infants showed a significant positive ERP response to contingent vocalisations by the mother and infant. At 9-months infants showed negative ERP response to the mother's contingent speech. Adults showed no differences in ERPs between contingent and non-contingent speech regardless of the talker. We interpret the increased positivity in response to contingent speech as suggesting that infants show an attentional response at 6-months, and the increased negativity at 9-months relates to lexical-semantic processing. Further work is necessary to confirm the development of distinct ERPs shown in response to natural speech.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christa Lam-Cassettari
- Western Sydney University, Australia; MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Australia.
| | - Varghese Peter
- Western Sydney University, Australia; School of Psychology, Western Sydney University, Australia
| | - Mark Antoniou
- Western Sydney University, Australia; MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Australia
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Brookman R, Kalashnikova M, Conti J, Xu Rattanasone N, Grant KA, Demuth K, Burnham D. Depression and Anxiety in the Postnatal Period: An Examination of Infants' Home Language Environment, Vocalizations, and Expressive Language Abilities. Child Dev 2020; 91:e1211-e1230. [PMID: 32745250 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13421] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
This longitudinal study investigated the effects of maternal emotional health concerns, on infants' home language environment, vocalization quantity, and expressive language skills. Mothers and their infants (at 6 and 12 months; 21 mothers with depression and or anxiety and 21 controls) provided day-long home-language recordings. Compared with controls, risk group recordings contained fewer mother-infant conversational turns and infant vocalizations, but daily number of adult word counts showed no group difference. Furthermore, conversational turns and infant vocalizations were stronger predictors of infants' 18-month vocabulary size than depression and anxiety measures. However, anxiety levels moderated the effect of conversational turns on vocabulary size. These results suggest that variability in mothers' emotional health influences infants' language environment and later language ability.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Marina Kalashnikova
- Western Sydney University.,BCBL-Basque Center for Cognition, Brain and Language
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Kuchirko YA, Tamis-LeMonda CS. The cultural context of infant development: Variability, specificity, and universality. ADVANCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR 2019; 57:27-63. [PMID: 31296318 DOI: 10.1016/bs.acdb.2019.04.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Researchers in developmental science often examine parenting and child development by ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups, frequently highlighting group differences in parent and infant behaviors. A sole focus on differences, however, obscures notable variability that exists within each community. Moreover, categories such as ethnicity and race are often assumed to encompass shared cultural backgrounds, which risks conflating race, ethnicity, and culture in psychological research. In this chapter, we examine cultural specificity and within-group heterogeneity that characterizes parenting and child development across socio-economic, ethnic, and racial groups. Drawing upon our work on ethnically and socioeconomically diverse parents and infants, we document the between-group differences, within-group variation, and universal processes in the form and content of parent-infant interactions. Most centrally, we highlight the role of family economic, human, and social capital in explaining the variability in parent-infant interactions across racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yana A Kuchirko
- Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, United States.
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