Contingent maternal responsiveness has previously been shown to influence the development of many abilities including attachment, language, vocabulary, phonology, attention, and cognitive functioning. In addition, it has been speculated that early contingent interactions may facilitate the development of early social communicative behaviors including joint attention abilities. Examining 13-month-old infant vocal-led interactions with mothers in free play allowed us to look at maternal responses to a specific social communicative interaction. These interactions were then correlated with infants' social communicative abilities as assessed by the Early Social Communicative Scales. Both components were then used to predict later language abilities using the McArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures. Specific responses from mothers during free play and infants communicative abilities were shown to correlate and predict social communicative abilities. Later language abilities were also shown to be predicted by specific responses from mothers during free play and infants' own social communicative skills.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / This study investigated the effects of training parents to administer a modified version of the focused stimulation intervention technique first reported by Girolametto, Pearce, and Weitzman (1996). Treatment was modified in a manner that increased reliance on a broader array of elements of responsive adult input (RAI), while eliminating reliance on a stipulated frequency of repetition. Prescriptive activity-based parent teaching was provided in the home by a team comprised of a speech and language pathologist (SLP) and a non-SLP early interventionist who was delegated responsibility for the majority of treatment. Eight parents and their toddlers with expressive language delay were randomly assigned to receive either prescriptive activity-based treatment (Treatment/PAT group) or traditional early intervention (Delayed-treatment Control/TEl group). Control group families received traditional early intervention services during the experimental period. Protocols for assignment of vocabulary targets and collection of outcome data were intended to replicate those of Girolametto et al. (1996). With one exception (Type Token Ratio), results indicate changes in the predicted direction for treatment group (PAT) parents and children receiving prescriptive activity-based treatment. Inferential statistics indicated a significant interaction for the Symbolic Play Test (Lowe & Costello, 1988). Results for measures that did not achieve statistical significance are attributed to the fact that the control group (TEl) received traditional early interventionist services during which non-SLP early interventionists modeled RAI elements. The study compares favorably with Girolametto et al. on numeric scores and magnitudes of effect. Following treatment, the language of parents receiving prescriptive activity-based treatment was slower, less complex, and more focused than those in the control group. Treatment group children used more target ords during naturalistic observations, used more words during free-play, and made substantial gains in vocabulary. Substantial gains were also identified in talkativeness and structural complexity of child language.

Until very recently language development research classified the language learner as belonging to one of two discrete groups – monolingual or bilingual. This thesis explores the hypothesis that this is an insufficient description of language input and that there are sub-groups within the monolingual category based on the phonological variability of their exposure that could be considered akin to that of bilingual toddlers. For some monolingual toddlers, classified as monodialectal, their language exposure is generally consistent, because both of their parents speak the dialect of the local area. Yet for other toddlers, classified as multidialectal, the language environment is more variable, because at least one of their parents speaks with a dialect that differs from the local area. It is considered that by testing this group of multidialectal toddlers it will be possible to explore the effect of variability on language development and how increased variability in the bilingual linguistic environment might be influencing aspects of language development. This thesis approaches the influence of variability from three areas of interest: phonetic specificity of familiar words using a mispronunciation paradigm (Experiments 1 and 2), target recognition of naturally occurring pronunciation alternatives (Experiments 3 and 4) and use of the Mutual Exclusivity strategy in novel word learning (Experiment 5). Results show that there are differences between the two dialect groups (monodialectal and multidialectal) in a mispronunciation detection task but that toddlers perform similarly with naturally occurring pronunciation alternatives and in their application of the Mutual Exclusivity strategy. This programme of work highlights that there is an influence of linguistic variability on aspects of language development, justifying the parallel between bilingualism and multidialectalism.

The purpose of this study is to find out how three teachers in Sweden work with literature and fiction in school. The main focus of this study is to examine for what reasons the teachers use literature and fiction as a pedagogic tool. Research shows that using fiction in school as an education tool can develop pupils writing and linguistic improvement. The teachers who were interviewed in this study seem to have a positive attitude to fiction.  They also believe that fiction is increasing the pupils´ vocabulary and that group discussions about reading are important because the pupils learn to reflect reading. The interwied teachers´-mention that fiction has a positive effect on pupils’ general language development. The method which was used in this essay is qualitative interviews. The participants have between 3 to 16 years of experience in their work field and the interviews were recorded and took place in their class room.

In this essay I have investigated how music and song can promote children’s language development. I have investigated what the preschool teachers think about music connected to language development and if they believe that they need to have the skills and experience for it to become a learning experience for children. I have done my research at two different preschools to support my findings. In each preschool I have interviewed a preschool teacher and also studied the children and teachers when they sang and made music together. The results I have gathered show that language and music have common components like rhythm, tone, pauses and melodies. During my observations I could see that the teachers used tools like movement, objects and sign language to promote the understanding of the words in the songs. In the result we also can see that the preschool teachers possess insight in the importance of music connected to children’s language development. Songs with movement are a commonly used tool which serves to lift children’s language development. This is because that through movement they can give meaning to the lyrics in the song. However it is important that the preschool teachers are devoted in their work with music with children. The educator must be aware of the importance of the social interaction and show an interest in the work with music. A danger can be that educators that aren’t aware of the importance of music or doesn’t show any interest in what’s being done will rub off their emotions onto the children that will increase a risk of little to no development or learning taking place.

The purpose of this dissertation is to empirically test the hypothesis that children's omission of functional elements reflects performance factors (McKee, 1994; McKee & Iwasaki, 2001), rather than lack of knowledge (Felix, 1987; Radford, 1990, 1995; Tomasello, 2000). The multi-level production system treats content and function morphemes differently (Garrett, 1982). Further, a function morpheme's free or bound status and the independence of the content stem affect the likelihood that a function morpheme will be omitted. Four experiments each employed production and comprehension tasks testing English- and Icelandic-speaking children's and adults' production and comprehension of different prepositional phrases. The English experiments tested prepositional phrases with content prepositions and content/function preposition combinations. The Icelandic experiments tested prepositional phrases with prepositions and their associated case markings. Function prepositions in English and case markings in Icelandic both convey information about case, with the former being a free function morpheme, and the latter a bound function morpheme. Both English- and Icelandic-speaking children showed comprehension of prepositions that they do not produce. Further, Icelandic-speaking children produced case markings but English-speaking children did not produce function prepositions. These findings support a performance-based hypothesis with omission attributable to coordination issues among elements in the multi-level production system. These findings also show the importance of cross-modality and cross-linguistic research in studying the competence of children before, during, and after the telegraphic speech stage.

The present study examined the influence of maternal age on infant home language environment, focusing on the environments of children born to young mothers using a naturalistic, comprehensive data collection technique. Our sample consisted of 30 mother-child pairs, between the ages of 15 and 21 years old. The current study used the LENA (LENA Research Foundation, 2011) digital processor and software to record and analyze recordings from each parent. Child language development and maternal knowledge of infant development were analyzed. We found that our sample of young mothers knows less about general infant knowledge compared to a normative general sample. We also found that our young mother sample performed similarly to a low SES sample of mothers on general infant development knowledge. Our results may provide support for the connection between knowledge of infant development in mothers leading to positive results in the form of language skills in their child. / October 2016

Children achieve increasingly complex language milestones initially in gesture before they do so in speech. In this study, we ask whether gesture continues to be part of the language-learning process as children develop more abstract language skills, namely metaphors. More specifically, we focus on spatial metaphors for time and ask whether developmental changes in children’s production of such metaphors in speech also become evident in gesture and what cognitive and linguistic factors contribute to these changes. To answer these questions, we analyzed the speech and gestures produced by three groups of children (ages 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8)—all learning English as first language—as they talked about past and future events, along with adult native speakers of English. Here we asked how early we see change in the orientation (sagittal vs. lateral), directionality (left-to-right, right-to-left, backward, or forward) and congruency with speech (lateral gestures with Time-RP language and sagittal gestures with Ego-RP language). Further, we asked how comprehension of metaphors for time and literacy level would influence these changes. We found developmental changes in the orientation, directionality, and congruency of children’s gestures about time. We found that children’s gestures about time change in orientation (sagittal vs. lateral), in that children increase their use of lateral gestures with age and that this increase is influenced by their literacy level. Further, the directionality (left-to-right, right-to-left, forward, backward) of children’s gestures changes with age. For sagittal gestures we found that children that understood metaphor for time were more likely to produce sagittal gestures that placed the past behind and the future ahead. For lateral gestures, we found that children with higher levels of literacy were more likely to use lateral gestures that place the past to the left and the future to the right. Finally the congruency of children’s gesture with their speech changed. The older children were more likely to pair lateral gestures with Time-RP language than Ego-RP language.

<p>Relationships between motor development and language abilities have been consistently reported in previous literature. One of the relationships that has becoming increasing popular is the link between walking and language. Whereas research has demonstrated that onset of walking is related to communicative skills and vocabulary abilities (e.g., Clearfield, 2011; Walle & Campos, 2014), the mechanism underlying this relationship remains unclear. One potential explanation is that walking increases young children’s opportunities to interact with objects and explore the environment. Young children’s ability to adapt gait while playing is necessary for successful navigation of their environment and may be one factor underlying the walking-language relationship. However, little research has examined how young children adapt gait when interacting with objects in their environment when they are free to walk in a naturalistic manner. Additionally, how young children’s gait control and behavior during free-play is related to word learning has also been understudied. The purpose of this dissertation was to quantify how new and experienced walkers adapt gait behavior based on task (carrying objects compared to not carrying objects) and environmental constraints (free-play versus straight-path) and assess how these behaviors may be related to language abilities early in development. </p> <p><br></p><p>Chapter 3 examined how object carriage impacts gait characteristics and behavioral measures of stability during free-play and a straight-path task. New (13-month-olds) and experienced (24-month-olds) walkers engaged in a 20-minute free-play session with their parents. Eighteen toys that varied in size and weight were provided. Following the free-play session, new and experienced walkers engaged in a straight-path task where they were encouraged to walk from their parents to the experimenter, take a toy, and carry the toy back to their parent. Overall, size and weight did not appear to impact lower-body gait characteristics. Although there were no differences in lower-body gait control when carrying a toy compared to not carrying a toy, there were individual differences in how young children adapted their step length, step width, and stride speed with some children adopting more mature gait characteristics and others adopting less mature gait patterns. Young children’s lower-body gait also differed based on environmental constraints (free-play versus straight-path task). In addition to these lower-body findings, new and experienced walkers also adapted their upper-body control when carrying toys in both free-play and the straight-path task. New walkers also appear to focus on weight of the toy when selecting toys to carry whereas experienced walkers did not demonstrate preference for specific toy characteristics. </p> <p><br></p><p>Chapter 4 assessed the relationship between gait characteristics and functional behavior during free-play and communicative/vocabulary abilities in new and experienced walkers. Thirty-eight new walkers and thirty-eight experienced walkers from Chapter 3 were included in the analyses. Additionally, thirteen new walkers also returned at 24-months and repeated the data collection procedure for a longitudinal analysis of these relationships. The protocol for Chapter 3 was the same as Chapter 4; however, only free-play measures were included in the analyses. Parents also filled out the age-appropriate version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory as a measure of communicative/vocabulary abilities. Overall, the results of Chapter 4 demonstrated that quality of upper-body gait control and time spent in motion were significant predictors of new walkers’ communicative skills and vocabulary abilities. Whereas these relationships were not apparent in the experienced walking group, quality of gait at 13-months was predictive of productive vocabulary scores at 24-months of age. </p> <p><br></p><p>Taken together, the results from these studies suggest that examining gait behavior during free-play reveals how complex young children’s navigation of their environment is. Furthermore, these early movements and functional behavior during free-play may be important predictors underlying the relationship between onset of walking and language development.</p>

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