Look Who’s Talking NOW! Parentese Speech, Social Context, and Language Development Across Time

Abstract

In previous studies, we found that the social interactions infants experience in their everyday lives at 11- and 14-months of age affect language ability at 24 months of age. These studies investigated relationships between the speech style (i.e., parentese speech vs. standard speech) and social context [i.e., one-on-one (1:1) vs. group] of language input in infancy and later speech development (i.e., at 24 months of age), controlling for socioeconomic status (SES). Results showed that the amount of exposure to parentese speech-1:1 in infancy was related to productive vocabulary at 24 months. The general goal of the present study was to investigate changes in (1) the pattern of social interactions between caregivers and their children from infancy to childhood and (2) relationships among speech style, social context, and language learning across time. Our study sample consisted of 30 participants from the previously published infant studies, evaluated at 33 months of age. Social interactions were assessed at home using digital first-person perspective recordings of the auditory environment. We found that caregivers use less parentese speech-1:1, and more standard speech-1:1, as their children get older. Furthermore, we found that the effects of parentese speech-1:1 in infancy on later language development at 24 months persist at 33 months of age. Finally, we found that exposure to standard speech-1:1 in childhood was the only social interaction that related to concurrent word production/use. Mediation analyses showed that standard speech-1:1 in childhood fully mediated the effects of parentese speech-1:1 in infancy on language development in childhood, controlling for SES. This study demonstrates that engaging in one-on-one interactions in infancy and later in life has important implications for language development.

Parent coaching increases conversational turns and advances infant language development

“…LENA Manual Analyses. Following the previously described procedures (25)(26)(27)30), the LENA audio files were processed using the LENA Advanced Data Extractor Tool (ADEX) to automatically identify segments for further manual analyses. Each participant's two daily recordings were segmented into 30-s intervals.…”

“…One intervention approach, adopted in the present study and in a limited number of previous studies (44)(45)(46)(47)(48), is to target specific aspects of parental language input to determine whether they are malleable, and if so, whether enhancements in these aspects lead to measurable changes in child language outcomes. We chose parentese as an entry point because it is used across cultures, and is present in most American households, but its frequency varies considerably (25)(26)(27)30). Another important aspect of our approach was to recruit families ranging in socioeconomic status (SES), in order to assess the potential role of SES on the effects of intervention.…”

“…These new data led authors to argue that parentese might assist language development in infants (2,18,20). Subsequent laboratory studies confirmed that the use of parentese facilitates specific aspects of infants' language learning and processing (10,(20)(21)(22)(23)(24), and recent studies using natural recordings in children's homes linked exposure to parentese, particularly in one-on-one situations, with enhanced child language outcomes (25)(26)(27).…”

What Do North American Babies Hear? A large‐scale cross‐corpus analysis

“…Some notable exceptions include Weisleder and Fernald () who hand‐classified 5‐min sections from LENA recordings of 19‐ and 24 month olds according to whether the adult speech contained within each section was primarily between adults or primarily addressed to the child. Taking a similar approach, Ramírez‐Esparza, García‐Sierra, and Kuhl (, ) hand‐coded 30‐s sections within LENA recordings of 11‐, 14‐, and 33‐month olds and coded each 30‐s section according to whether it contained multiple adults, and whether the speech to children actually employed a CDS or ADS register. The results of these studies suggest that the quantity of CDS is associated with later vocabulary knowledge, among other findings.…”

Early language exposure supports later language skills in infants with and without autism

“…For example, 11-14 month old infants benefited from hearing child-directed speech, a speech style characterized by slower speech, elongated vowels, and wide ranges in pitch [Ramírez-Esparza, García-Sierra, & Kuhl, 2014]. By age 33 months, caregiver speech patterns shifted, with standard speech, and not infantdirected speech, showing significant positive associations with language skills [Ramírez-Esparza, García-Sierra, & Kuhl, 2017]. Many studies have also found that overall amount of adult speech, or total number of word tokens, is associated with later language skills [Hurtado et al, 2008;Huttenlocher et al, 1991Huttenlocher et al, , 2010Mahr & Edwards, 2018].…”