Talking to children: The within-classroom nature of everyday adult language in the early childhood educational environment

Group-size effects, as changes in the adult language when speaking to individual or multiple children in two- and three-year-olds' Australian childcare centre classrooms were investigated. The language addressed to children by 21 staff members was coded for social (e.g., non-verbal, inferential and pragmatic), and linguistic (e.g., morphological, lexical, syntactic and referential) features. In the two-year-olds' classrooms, minimal differences were found between the language used in dyads (addressed to a single child) and polyads (addressed to more than one child). More extensive group-size effects, particularly in syntactic complexity, were found in the three-year-olds' classrooms. Explanations for the constancy of the adult language input in the younger classrooms, and the changes noted in the older rooms will be discussed in terms of plurality (i.e., more than one listener), methodology, and group-size effects that may be specific to the early childhood educational setting.

Language outcomes subsequent to treatment of brainstem tumour in childhood

While the occurrence and management of brainstem tumours in children would not traditionally indicate potential direct structural impact on classical language centres, recent theories have implicated some involvement of the brainstem in a functional language and cognitive neural loop between the cerebellum and the cerebral hemispheres. Thus, the present paper explored the impact of treatment for brainstem tumour on the general and high-level language abilities of six children treated for brainstem tumour, in addition to phonological awareness skills. Group analysis revealed that children treated for brainstem tumour demonstrated intact language and phonological awareness abilities in comparison to an age- and gender-matched control group. Individual analysis revealed only one of six children treated for brainstem tumour revealed evidence of language disturbances, with an additional child demonstrating an isolated mildly reduced score on one phonological awareness task. Language deficits identified in a child treated with a combination of both radiotherapy and chemotherapy were noted in the high-level language area of lexical generation. Findings highlighted that no overt language disturbances were evident in children treated for brainstem tumour. However, further analysis into higher-level language skills in the present study indicated that both general and high-level language abilities require long-term monitoring in this population.

Language against the odds, or rather not:the weak central coherence hypothesis and language

EV is a child with a talent for learning language combined with Asperger syndrome. EV’s talent is evident in the unusual circumstances of her acquisition of both her first (Bulgarian) and second (German) languages and the unique patterns of both receptive and expressive language (in both the L1 and L2), in which she shows subtle dissociations in competence and performance consistent with an uneven cognitive profile of skills and abilities. We argue that this case provides support for theories of language learning and usage that require more general underlying cognitive mechanisms and skills. One such account, the Weak Central Coherence (WCC) hypothesis of autism, provides a plausible framework for the interpretation of the simultaneous co-occurrence of EV’s particular pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, we show that specific features of the uneven cognitive profile of Asperger syndrome can help explain the observed language talent displayed by EV. Thus, rather than demonstrating a case where language learning takes place despite the presence of deficits, EV’s case illustrates how a pattern of strengths within this profile can specifically promote language learning.

Increased prevalence of sex chromosome aneuploidies in specific language impairment and dyslexia

Aim: Sex chromosome aneuploidies increase the risk of spoken or written language disorders but individuals with specific language impairment (SLI) or dyslexia do not routinely undergo cytogenetic analysis. We assess the frequency of sex chromosome aneuploidies in individuals with language impairment or dyslexia. Method: Genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping was performed in three sample sets: a clinical cohort of individuals with speech and language deficits (87 probands: 61 males, 26 females; age range 4 to 23 years), a replication cohort of individuals with SLI, from both clinical and epidemiological samples (209 probands: 139 males, 70 females; age range 4 to 17 years), and a set of individuals with dyslexia (314 probands: 224 males, 90 females; age range 7 to 18 years). Results: In the clinical language-impaired cohort, three abnormal karyotypic results were identified in probands (proband yield 3.4%). In the SLI replication cohort, six abnormalities were identified providing a consistent proband yield (2.9%). In the sample of individuals with dyslexia, two sex chromosome aneuploidies were found giving a lower proband yield of 0.6%. In total, two XYY, four XXY (Klinefelter syndrome), three XXX, one XO (Turner syndrome), and one unresolved karyotype were identified. Interpretation: The frequency of sex chromosome aneuploidies within each of the three cohorts was increased over the expected population frequency (approximately 0.25%) suggesting that genetic testing may prove worthwhile for individuals with language and literacy problems and normal non-verbal IQ. Early detection of these aneuploidies can provide information and direct the appropriate management for individuals. © 2013 The Authors. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Mac Keith Press.

Case study: auditory brain responses in a minimally verbal child with autism and cerebral palsy

An estimated 30% of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) remain minimally verbal into late childhood, but research on cognition and brain function in ASD focuses almost exclusively on those with good or only moderately impaired language. Here we present a case study investigating auditory processing of GM, a nonverbal child with ASD and cerebral palsy. At the age of 8 years, GM was tested using magnetoencephalography (MEG) whilst passively listening to speech sounds and complex tones. Where typically developing children and verbal autistic children all demonstrated similar brain responses to speech and nonspeech sounds, GM produced much stronger responses to nonspeech than speech, particularly in the 65–165 ms (M50/M100) time window post-stimulus onset. GM was retested aged 10 years using electroencephalography (EEG) whilst passively listening to pure tone stimuli. Consistent with her MEG response to complex tones, GM showed an unusually early and strong response to pure tones in her EEG responses. The consistency of the MEG and EEG data in this single case study demonstrate both the potential and the feasibility of these methods in the study of minimally verbal children with ASD. Further research is required to determine whether GM's atypical auditory responses are characteristic of other minimally verbal children with ASD or of other individuals with cerebral palsy.

An examination of the effects of a summer book-reading program on the language and early literacy outcomes of toddlers from high risk environments

The current study examined the impact of an early summer literacy program and the mediating effects of the home literacy environment on the language and literacy outcomes of a group of children at-risk for long-term developmental and academic delays. Participating children (n=54) were exposed to an intensive book-reading intervention each summer (June through mid August) over a 3-year period. The current study implemented an ex post facto, quasi-experimental design. This nonequivalent group design involved a pretest and posttest over three time points for a non-randomized treatment group and a matched non-treatment comparison group. Results indicated that literacy scores did improve for the children over the 3-year period; however, language scores did not experience the same rate of change over time. Receptive language was significantly impacted by attendance, and race/ethnicity. Expressive language was impacted significantly by gestational age and attendance. Results also indicated that language outcomes for young children who are exposed to a literacy program were higher than those who did not participate; however, only receptive language yielded significance at the p<.05 level. These study results also found that activities in the home that support literacy and learning do indeed impact language and literacy outcomes for these children, specifically, the age at which a child is read to, the number of books in the home, a child’s enjoyment of reading, and whether a child looks at books on his or her own impact language scores. This study concluded that at-risk young children do benefit from center-based literacy intervention. This literacy experience, however, is also driven by the children's home environment, their attendance to the program, whether they were premature or not and the type of caregiver.

The role of *language in early childhood mathematics

Math literacy is imperative to succeed in society. Experience is key for acquiring math literacy. A preschooler's world is full of mathematical experiences. Children are continually counting, sorting and comparing as they play. As children are engaged in these activities they are using language as a tool to express their mathematical thinking. If teachers are aware of these teachable moments and help children bridge their daily experiences to mathematical concepts, math literacy may be enhanced. This study described the interactions between teachers and preschoolers, determining the extent to which teachers scaffold children's everyday language into expressions of mathematical concepts. Of primary concern were the teachers' responsive interactions to children's expressions of an implicit mathematical utterance made while engaged in block play. The parallel mixed methods research design consisted of two strands. Strand 1 of the study focused on preschoolers' use of everyday language and the teachers' responses after a child made a mathematical utterance. Twelve teachers and 60 students were observed and videotaped while engaged in block play. Each teacher worked with five children for 20 minutes, yielding 240 minutes of observation. Interaction analysis was used to deductively analyze the recorded observations and field notes. Using a priori codes for the five mathematical concepts, it was found children produced 2,831 mathematical utterances. Teachers ignored 60% of these utterances and responded to, but did not mediate 30% of them. Only 10% of the mathematical utterances were mediated to a mathematical concept. Strand 2 focused on the teacher's view of the role of language in early childhood mathematics. The 12 teachers who had been observed as part of the first strand of the study were interviewed. Based on a thematic analysis of these interviews three themes emerged: (a) the importance of a child's environment, (b) the importance of an education in society, and (c) the role of math in early childhood. Finally, based on a meta-inference of both strands, three themes emerged: (a) teacher conception of math, (b) teacher practice, and (c) teacher sensitivity. Implications based on the findings involve policy, curriculum, and professional development.

HomeBank: An Online Repository of Daylong Child-Centered Audio Recordings.

HomeBank is introduced here. It is a public, permanent, extensible, online database of daylong audio recorded in naturalistic environments. HomeBank serves two primary purposes. First, it is a repository for raw audio and associated files: one database requires special permissions, and another redacted database allows unrestricted public access. Associated files include metadata such as participant demographics and clinical diagnostics, automated annotations, and human-generated transcriptions and annotations. Many recordings use the child-perspective LENA recorders (LENA Research Foundation, Boulder, Colorado, United States), but various recordings and metadata can be accommodated. The HomeBank database can have both vetted and unvetted recordings, with different levels of accessibility. Additionally, HomeBank is an open repository for processing and analysis tools for HomeBank or similar data sets. HomeBank is flexible for users and contributors, making primary data available to researchers, especially those in child development, linguistics, and audio engineering. HomeBank facilitates researchers' access to large-scale data and tools, linking the acoustic, auditory, and linguistic characteristics of children's environments with a variety of variables including socioeconomic status, family characteristics, language trajectories, and disorders. Automated processing applied to daylong home audio recordings is now becoming widely used in early intervention initiatives, helping parents to provide richer speech input to at-risk children.

Individual differences in speech and language ability profiles in areas of high deprivation

Speech and language ability is not a unitary concept; rather, it is made up of multiple abilities such as grammar, articulation and vocabulary. Young children from socio-economically deprived areas are more likely to experience language difficulties than those living in more affluent areas. However, less is known about individual differences in language difficulties amongst young children from socio-economically deprived backgrounds. The present research examined 172 four-year-old children from socio-economically deprived areas on standardised measures of core language, receptive vocabulary, articulation, information conveyed and grammar. Of the total sample, 26% had difficulty in at least one area of language. While most children with speech and language difficulty had generally low performance in all areas, around one in 10 displayed more uneven language abilities. For example, some children had generally good speech and language ability, but had specific difficulty with grammar. In such cases their difficulty is masked somewhat by good overall performance on language tests but they could still benefit from intervention in a specific area. The analysis also identified a number of typically achieving children who were identified as having borderline speech and language difficulty and should be closely monitored

Biliteracy effects on phonological awareness, oral language proficiency and reading skills in Taiwanese Mandarin-English bilingual children

The present study examined the effect of learning to read a heritage language on Taiwanese Mandarin-English bilingual children’s Chinese and English phonological awareness, Chinese and English oral language proficiency, and English reading skills. Participants were 40 Taiwanese Mandarin-English bilingual children and 20 English monolingual children in the U.S. Based on their performance on a Chinese character reading test, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups: the Chinese Beginning Reader and Chinese Nonreader groups. A single child categorized as a Chinese Advanced Reader also participated. Children received phonological awareness tasks, produced oral narrative samples from a wordless picture book, and took standardized English reading subtests. The bilingual participants received measures in both English and Chinese, whereas English monolingual children received only English measures. Additional demographic information was collected from a language background survey filled out by parents. Results of two MANOVAs indicated that the Chinese Beginning Reader group outperformed the Chinese Nonreader and English Monolingual groups on some phonological awareness measures and the English nonword reading test. In an oral narrative production task in English, the English Monolingual group produced a greater total number of words (TNW) and more different words (NDW) than the Chinese Nonreader group. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine whether bilingual children’s Chinese character reading ability would still account for a unique amount of variance in certain outcome variables, independent of nonverbal IQ and other potential demographic or performance variables and to clarify the direction of causality for bilingual children’s performance in the three domains. These results suggested that learning to read in a heritage language directly or indirectly enhances bilingual children’s ability in phonological awareness and certain English reading skills. It also appears that greater oral language proficiency in Chinese promotes early reading in the heritage language. Advanced heritage reading may produce even larger gains. Practical implications of learning a heritage language in the U.S. are discussed.

Language Outcomes of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Project Home Consultation model—An Extended Analysis

The current study is a post-hoc analysis of data from the original randomized control trial of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Home Consultation program, a parent-mediated, DIR/Floortime based early intervention program for children with ASD (Solomon, Van Egeren, Mahone, Huber, & Zimmerman, 2014). We examined 22 children from the original RCT who received the PLAY program. Children were split into two groups (high and lower functioning) based on the ADOS module administered prior to intervention. Fifteen-minute parent-child video sessions were coded through the use of CHILDES transcription software. Child and maternal language, communicative behaviors, and communicative functions were assessed in the natural language samples both pre- and post-intervention. Results demonstrated significant improvements in both child and maternal behaviors following intervention. There was a significant increase in child verbal and non-verbal initiations and verbal responses in whole group analysis. Total number of utterances, word production, and grammatical complexity all significantly improved when viewed across the whole group of participants; however, lexical growth did not reach significance. Changes in child communicative function were especially noteworthy, and demonstrated a significant increase in social interaction and a significant decrease in non-interactive behaviors. Further, mothers demonstrated an increase in responsiveness to the child’s conversational bids, increased ability to follow the child’s lead, and a decrease in directiveness. When separated for analyses within groups, trends emerged for child and maternal variables, suggesting greater gains in use of communicative function in both high and low groups over changes in linguistic structure. Additional analysis also revealed a significant inverse relationship between maternal responsiveness and child non-interactive behaviors; as mothers became more responsive, children’s non-engagement was decreased. Such changes further suggest that changes in learned skills following PLAY parent training may result in improvements in child social interaction and language abilities.

"Knock, knock! Is it english or portuguese sign language?"

A presente investigação mostra a importância do contacto de crianças muito jovens com línguas estrangeiras. Este trabalho concentra-se na tentativa de investigar, numa abordagem plurilingue, com enfoque para a Língua Inglesa e a Língua Gestual Portuguesa, a sensibilização de um grupo de alunos do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico para uma língua diferente da sua língua materna. Nesta pesquisa, adotou-se uma postura de investigação-ação, apoiando-se com grande particularidade numa metodologia qualitativa e com menor relevância numa metodologia quantitativa, onde os alunos, através das várias atividades que desenvolveram foram adquirindo diferentes competências nas duas línguas. Isto permitiu aos alunos despertarem todas as suas potencialidades para a aprendizagem destas duas línguas (Língua Inglesa e Língua Gestual Portuguesa), tendo como ponto de partida a sua sensibilização e a aprendizagem de alguns vocábulos. Acreditamos que esta abordagem plurilíngue poderá auxiliar os alunos no desenvolvimento de habilidades linguísticas, cognitivas e pessoais tais como: a intercompreensão, o conhecimento de características específicas de diferentes línguas existentes em seu redor, a comparação linguística entre elas, a sua compreensão lexical, e por fim a competência em relacionar as línguas a culturas, e acima de tudo, o respeito e valorização da diversidade linguística e cultural. Foram utilizadas nas aulas atividades de nível de compreensão e produção oral, num processo de sensibilização e aprendizagem de alguns vocábulos destas línguas, sendo que os resultados foram posteriormente analisados, através de grelhas de observação das atividades, de dois inquéritos por questionário e fotos. Das observações e conclusões retiradas desta análise, confirmou-se que a sensibilização quanto à Língua Inglesa assim como quanto à Língua Gestual Portuguesa promove o desenvolvimento da criança, assim como a valorização da respetiva diversidade linguística e cultural.

Home Literacy Activities in Latino Immigrant Families: Contributions to Toddlers’ Expressive and Receptive Language Skills

The development of language is a critical component of early childhood, enabling children to communicate their wishes and desires, share thoughts, and build meaning through linguistic interactions with others. A wealth of research has highlighted the importance of children’s early home experiences in fostering language development. This literature emphasizes the importance of a stimulating and supportive home environment in which children are engaged in literacy activities such as reading, telling stories, or singing songs with their parents. This study examined the association between low-income Latino immigrant mothers’ and fathers’ home literacy activities and their children’s receptive and expressive language skills. It also examined the moderating influence of maternal (i.e., reading quality and language quality) and child (engagement during reading, interest in literacy activities) characteristics on this association. This study included observational mother-child reading interactions, child expressive and receptive language assessments, and mother- and father-reported survey data. Controlling for parental education, multiple regression analyses revealed a positive association between home literacy activities and children’s receptive and expressive language skills. The findings also revealed that mothers’ reading quality and children’s engagement during reading (for expressive language skills only) moderated this association. Findings from this study will help inform new interventions, programs, and policies that build on Latino families’ strengths.

READY FOR KINDERGARTEN: A TRAINING PROGRAM DESIGNED TO ENCOURAGE PARENT-CHILD CONVERSATION DURING THE PRESCHOOL YEARS

Many children in the United States begin kindergarten unprepared to converse in the academic language surrounding instruction, putting them at greater risk for later language and reading difficulties. Importantly, correlational research has shown there are certain experiences prior to kindergarten that foster the oral language skills needed to understand and produce academic language. The focus of this dissertation was on increasing one of these experiences: parent-child conversations about abstract and non-present concepts, known as decontextualized language (DL). Decontextualized language involves talking about non-present concepts such as events that happened in the past or future, or abstract discussions such as providing explanations or defining unknown words. As caregivers’ decontextualized language input to children aged three to five is consistently correlated with kindergarten oral language skills and later reading achievement, it is surprising no experimental research has been done to establish this relation causally. The study described in this dissertation filled this literature gap by designing, implementing, and evaluating a decontextualized language training program for parents of 4-year-old children (N=30). After obtaining an initial measure of decontextualized language, parents were randomly assigned to a control condition or training condition, the latter of which educated parents about decontextualized language and why it is important. All parents then audio-recorded four mealtime conversations over the next month, which were transcribed and reliably coded for decontextualized language. Results indicated that trained parents boosted their DL from roughly 17 percent of their total utterances at baseline to approximately 50 percent by the mid-point of the study, and remained at these boosted levels throughout the duration of the study. Children’s DL was also boosted by similar margins, but no improvement in children’s oral language skills was observed, measured prior to, and one month following training. Further, exploratory analyses pointed to parents’ initial use of DL and their theories of the malleability of intelligence (i.e., growth mindsets) as moderators of training gains. Altogether, these findings are a first step in establishing DL as a viable strategy for giving children the oral language skills needed to begin kindergarten ready to succeed in the classroom.