PURPOSE: There is a growing body of research, supported by the discussion of developmental cascades, that indicates that communication and motor development are inextricably linked. Previous studies have demonstrated that the acquisition of certain motor milestones (i.e., sitting, walking, reaching) are associated with an infant’s subsequent emerging language abilities, however these studies often relied solely on parental reports due to the challenging nature of assessing prelinguistic infants' language abilities. Building on previous work that has established longitudinal links between specific gross motor milestones at 6 months and indicators of children's subsequent language at 10-14 months (Libertus & Violi, 2016), the present study aimed to extend this work by investigating objective measures of motor skills and their relation to an infant’s measures of expressive and receptive language at later time points using more nuanced, sensitive, and objective measures. METHODS: 24 typically developing infants and their demographic, motor, speech, and language data were selected from a larger longitudinal study in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. The infant’s motor and language abilities were assessed at different time points using parent reports, standardized measures, and fine-grained analysis of infant vocalization. RESULTS: Gross motor skills (as indicated by the Alberta Infant Motor Scale) at 6 months were found to have a significant positive correlation with receptive language abilities at 12 months. In turn, language as indicated by number of vocalizations but not motor skills at 12 months was found to significantly contribute to the prediction of expressive language abilities at 24 months. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that an infant’s early motor skills may play a role in subsequent language development through interactions that support the notion of developmental cascades. These results support previous findings linking motor skills and emerging language development as well as extend this relationship in typically developing infants using objective measures of motor and language abilities.

PURPOSE: Parent-child shared reading is understood to serve as a particularly enriching platform for conversational interactions, one that has been repeatedly linked to children’s language skills and subsequent reading abilities (Demir-Lira et al., 2019; Mol & Bus, 2011). Parent-based early intervention programs commonly target shared reading to bolster children’s language development. However, these programs have yet to address the role of parental oral reading prosody, which may influence parent-child conversational interactions during shared reading. It has been shown that prosody in child-directed speech helps children’s speech discrimination and word learning skills, however, the specific role of parental oral reading prosody remains understudied (Liu et al., Ma et al., 2011). In order to address this gap in the literature, the proposed research will examine whether parental oral reading prosody is associated with qualitative aspects of parent-child conversational interactions during shared book reading experiences. Additionally, this research will examine whether parental oral reading prosody is related to parental language and reading skills. METHODS: The current study includes preliminary data from 13 parent-child dyads of preschool age children (4-5 years) as part of an ongoing study at Boston University. Parents were asked to read the children’s book, Forget-Me-Not to their children, as they normally would at home. Parents also completed subtests from the Woodcock Johnson IV Tests of Oral Language (WJ-IV-OL) and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, 3rd Edition (WRMT III) to assess language and reading abilities. Acoustic quantification of parental oral reading prosody was then extracted from audio recordings of the shared reading experience using Praat. Prosodic elements of interest included mean fundamental frequency (f0), reading rate (in syllables per second) including and excluding pauses, the total pause duration, and the total number of pauses. The Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) program was used to measure qualitative aspects of the parent-child dyad extratextual conversational interactions occurring during the shared reading experience, which included total parent and child utterances, conversational turns, parent and child MLU in both word and morphemes, and parent and child mean length of conversational turns in words. Partial correlation analyses were then employed to examine parental oral reading prosody measures in relation to parent-child conversational interactions, controlling for parental education and reading skills, as well as parental language and reading skills, controlling for parental education. RESULTS: Preliminary results revealed significant associations between timing aspects of parental oral reading prosody and parent-child conversational interactions during a shared reading experience, controlling for parental education and parent reading skills. Specifically, results revealed that parent reading rate (with and without pauses) was positively associated with parent and child mean length of utterance (MLU) in words and morphemes, as well as child mean turn length in words, controlling for parental education and reading ability. Additionally, results revealed significant negative associations between total pause duration and total pauses and parental language and reading scores, controlling for parental education. CONCLUSION: The present study reveals provisional links between parental oral reading prosody and parent-child conversational interactions during a shared reading experience, as well as parental language and reading abilities. Future research should examine these relationships further with a larger sample of parent-child dyads. The current study’s preliminary findings carry implications for understanding ways to enrich parent-child conversational interactions during shared book reading experiences.

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