Beyond counting words: A paradigm shift for the study of language acquisition

Abstract

In 1995, Hart and Risley, in a groundbreaking study, reported a projected 30-million-word gap in words heard by age 4 between children growing up in low-resourced homes and their peers growing up in high-resourced homes, with corresponding differences in children's language skills. The simple and parsimonious message that children who hear more words know more words infiltrated the public sphere, influencing researchers, policymakers, and caregivers. However, the benefits associated with exposure to language are nuanced and complex, and language input is about more than the number of words that pass a child's senses. The features of the language, often referenced as quality, addressed to children may be more important for language development than the amount of talk per se. What words caregivers use and how they use them vary greatly. Several researchers have recognized the value of measuring features of language input (Cartmill, 2016;Kuchirko, 2019;Rowe & Snow, 2020). In this article, we argue that this focus further promotes a more inclusive approach to understanding how children learn, which is crucial as the field moves away from a focus on Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) populations and toward a more global science. QUA N T I F Y I NG SPEEC H I N PU TDecades after Hart and Risley's report (1995), the quantity of speech in children's environments continues to be a major area of focus (see Kuchirko, 2019, for a review). Indeed, even research that has focused on debunking

Parent Responsivity, Language Input, and the Development of Simple Sentences

“…Although responsive features of parent interaction are beneficial, they do not address WHAT linguistic properties of input support the acquisition of specific sentence structures (Masek et al, 2021b). In fact, most studies of linguistic features rely on general measures of lexical diversity and mean length of utterance (MLU) to characterize parent input quality.…”

“…Recent work has also called for researchers to operationalize input quality from a multidimensional perspective, including social interactive, linguistic, and conceptual features of input (Rowe & Snow, 2020). To advance our understanding of how input supports the distinct mechanisms that underlie language learning, we must define both HOW input should be delivered and WHAT the content of that input should be (Masek, Ramirez, McMillan, Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2021b). Social interaction theories inform our definitions of HOW input should be delivered, and linguistic and psycholinguistic theory can generate testable hypotheses about the linguistic content that may be facilitative in a given development period.…”

Talking With Each Other : The Role of Language Environment Factors on Early Language Development From Different Perspectives

“…Today, researchers suggest that much previous research has overemphasized the value of merely the amount of words and there is now a call for a paradigm shift to include more qualitative aspects of language environment (Masek et al, 2021). If only the amount of words in isolation fostered children's outcomes, this could be easily solved.…”

“…There are different suggestions about what might be a reasonable approach for measuring interaction. For example, Masek et al (2021), who called for a paradigm shift to focus on the quality rather than quantity of the language environment, argued that calculating interactions in terms of CTC is too scanty (e.g., conservative and not necessarily consistent with human coders and does not measure any non-verbal interaction). Instead, the interactional measures they suggested were methods that allow for a richer understanding, such as measuring joint attention (i.e., parent and child focus on the same object or event) and contingency (i.e., meaningful responses that promote adult-child turn-takings).…”

Word Learning by Preschool-Age Children: Differences in Encoding, Re-Encoding, and Consolidation Across Learners During Slow Mapping

“…Researchers have identified both external and internal factors related to this growth. External factors include the quantity and quality of language input ( Masek et al, 2021 ; Rowe, 2012 ) and socioeconomic status (SES; McKean et al, 2015 ; Taylor et al, 2013 ). Internal factors include inhibitory control ( Hadley et al, 2021 ; M. M. McClelland et al, 2007 ), attentional processes ( Smith & Yu, 2013 ), and children's vocabulary knowledge when starting vocabulary instruction ( Penno et al, 2002 ).…”