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Studies of early communicative development have shown a relationship between rates of communicative acts (CA) and the acquisition of words for typically developing children. Rates of CA provide a measure that predicts vocabulary growth. For children with cleft lip and/or palate, early vocabulary delays are common. Examination of rates of CA may provide a means for predicting which children show readiness for vocabulary expansion. The purpose of this study was to examine children’s rates of CA, canonical vocalizations (CV), and words during the transition from prelinguistic to linguistic development. This retrospective study included 15 participants from northeast Tennessee that were drawn from a previous longitudinal study of nonsyndromic children with cleft lip and/or palate. There were nine females and six males; nine of the participants had cleft lip and palate, while the remaining six participants had cleft palate only. Through video recordings, children were evaluated at 18, 24, and 30 months of age, during which time they transitioned from the prelinguistic level (< 10 words on CDI) to the linguistic level (> 10). Data was recorded on the number of CA [e.g., protodeclaratives (PD) and protoimperatives (PI) to determine the purpose of communication], CV, and words the child produced at each age. The data was then converted to a rate per minute ratio. The results show that from the prelinguistic to the linguistic level, the children’s average rate of CA overall increased from 1.94 to 3.08; PD from 18.86 to 19.45; words from 0.46 to 2.66 and both CV and PI decreased from 0.39 to 0.36 and 0.21 to 0.00 respectively. Results indicate that when compared to typically developing children, children with cleft lip and/or palate demonstrated delays when transitioning from prelinguistic to the linguistic level in rates of CA, CV, and words. This study did not show a significant correlation between CA at the prelinguistic level and word use at the linguistic level. When compared to the study of typically developing children conducted by Proctor-Williams, Dixon, Brown, Ringley, Barber, and Light-Newell (2007), the participants in this study demonstrated a delayed progression in the rate of CA, CV and word acquisition. Scores for PI and PD were not found to be statistically different across age groups for children with cleft lip and/or palate. Measurement of rates of CA at the prelinguistic level could assist clinicians in better assessing early communicative development in children with cleft lip and/or palate beyond traditional measures of vocalization. While this study did not find a significant difference between prelinguistic CA and linguistic CDI, CV, and words, a study with more participants is necessary to identify potential predictive relationships. This study identified differences in rates of CA, CV, and words, which suggest that early delays are not restricted to developmental parameters associated with sound production. Future studies should also incorporate testing at closer age intervals to more specifically determine their development and provide a better indication of rates of CA and CV per minute.

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No description available.

Thesis (Ed. S.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Psychology, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 15-16).

This thesis presents four experimental studies, carried out at the Phonetic laboratory, Stockholm University, on infants’ ability to establish auditory-visual sound-meaning associations as a precursor of early word acquisition. Study I reports on the effect of linguistic variance on infants’ ability (3- to 20-months) to establish sound-meaning associations. The target-words embedded in phrases, based on an artificial language, were presented along with visually displayed puppets. Study II investigates the role of attribute type on infants’ ability (3- to 6-months) to establish sound-meaning associations. Two-word phrases, based on the same artificial language as in Study I, were presented along with visually displayed geometrical objects. The words implicitly referred to the color and shape of the objects. Study III examines infants’ ability (12- to 16-months) to predict phonetic information. The subjects were tested on their ability to associate Swedish whole words and disrupted words to familiar objects. Study IV investigates infants’ ability (6- to 8-months) to detect concurrence and synchrony in speech and non-speech. The infants were exposed to Swedish speech sounds presented with corresponding articulatory events, the sound of hand-clapping presented with synchronized hand-clapping movements, and the sound of hand-clapping presented with synchronized articulatory events. The results picture the subject as sensitive to distributional properties of auditory and visual information (Study I and II) but still unable to predict phonetic information, in the beginning of the second year of life (Study III). The infants’ conceptual behavior is outlined as a general-purpose perceptual process influenced by perceptual salience (Study IV). These results are related to a working hypothesis based on the Ecological theory of language acquisition (Lacerda &amp; Sundberg, 2006), and Lindblom (Lindblom, 1990; Lindblom &amp; Lacerda, 2006). / <p>För att köpa boken skicka en beställning till exp@ling.su.se/ To order the book send an e-mail to exp@ling.su.se</p>

Les langues ont de nombreux types de dépendances, certaines concernant des éléments adjacents et d'autres concernant des éléments non adjacents. Au cours des dernières décennies, de nombreuses études ont montré comment les capacités précoces générales des enfants pour traiter le langage se transforment en capacités spécialisées pour la langue qu'ils acquièrent. Ces études ont montré que pendant la deuxième moitié de leur première année de vie, les enfants deviennent sensibles aux propriétés prosodiques, phonétiques et phonotactiques de leur langue maternelle concernant les éléments adjacents. Cependant, aucune étude n'avait mis en évidence la sensibilité des enfants à des dépendances phonologiques non-adjacentes, qui sont un élément clé dans les langues humaines. Par conséquent, la présente thèse a examiné si les enfants sont capables de détecter, d'apprendre et d’utiliser des dépendances phonotactiques non-adjacentes. Le biais Labial-Coronal, correspondant à la prévalence des structures commençant par une consonne labiale suivie d'une consonne coronale (LC, comme bateau), par rapport au pattern inverse Coronal-Labial (CL, comme tabac), a été utilisé pour explorer la sensibilité des nourrissons aux dépendances phonologiques non-adjacentes. Nos résultats établissent qu’à 10 mois les enfants de familles francophones sont sensibles aux dépendances phonologiques non-adjacentes (partie expérimentale 1.1). De plus, nous avons exploré le niveau auquel s’effectuent ces acquisitions. En effet, des analyses de fréquence sur le lexique du français ont montré que le biais LC est clairement présent pour les séquences de plosives et de nasales, mais pas pour les fricatives. Les résultats d'une série d'expériences suggèrent que le pattern de préférences des enfants n’est pas guidé par l'ensemble des fréquences cumulées dans le lexique, ou des fréquences de paires individuelles, mais par des classes de consonnes définies par le mode d'articulation (partie expérimentale 1.2). En outre, nous avons cherché à savoir si l’émergence du biais LC était liés à des contraintes de type maturationnel ou bien par l'exposition à l’input linguistique. Pour cela, nous avons tout d’abord testé l'émergence du biais LC dans une population présentant des différences de maturation, à savoir des enfants nés prématurément (± 3 mois avant terme), puis comparé leurs performances à un groupe d‘enfants nés à terme appariés en âge de maturation, et à un groupe de nourrissons nés à terme appariés en âge chronologique. Nos résultats indiquent qu’à 10 mois les enfants prématurés ont un pattern qui ressemble plus au pattern des enfants nés à terme âgés de 10 mois (même âge d'écoute) qu’à celui des enfants nés à terme âgés de 7 mois (même âge de maturation ; partie expérimentale 1.3). Deuxièmement, nous avons testé une population apprenant une langue où le biais LC n’est pas aussi clairement présent dans le lexique : le japonais. Les résultats de cette série d'expériences n’a montré aucune préférence pour les structures LC ou CL chez les enfants japonais (partie expérimentale 1.4). Pris ensemble, ces résultats suggèrent que le biais LC peut être attribué à l'exposition à l'input linguistique et pas seulement à des contraintes maturationnelles. Enfin, nous avons exploré si, et quand, les acquisitions phonologiques apprises au cours de la première année de la vie influencent le début du développement lexical au niveau de la segmentation et de l’apprentissage des mots. Nos résultats montrent que les mots avec la structure phonotactique LC, plus fréquente, sont segmentés (partie expérimentale 2.1) et appris (partie expérimentale 2.2) à un âge plus précoce que les mots avec la structure phonotactique CL moins fréquente. Ces résultats suggèrent que les connaissances phonotactiques préalablement acquises peuvent influencer l'acquisition lexicale, même quand il s'agit d'une dépendance non-adjacente. / Languages instantiate many different kinds of dependencies, some holding between adjacent elements and others holding between non-adjacent elements. During the past decades, many studies have shown how infant initial language-general abilities change into abilities that are attuned to the language they are acquiring. These studies have shown that during the second half of their first year of life, infants became sensitive to the prosodic, phonetic and phonotactic properties of their mother tongue holding between adjacent elements. However, at the present time, no study has established sensitivity to nonadjacent phonological dependencies, which are a key feature in human languages. Therefore, the present dissertation investigates whether infants are able to detect, learn and use non-adjacent phonotactic dependencies. The Labial-Coronal bias, corresponding to the prevalence of structures starting with a labial consonant followed by a coronal consonant (LC, i.e. bat), over the opposite pattern (CL, i.e. tab) was used to explore infants sensitivity to non-adjacent phonological dependencies. Our results establish that by 10 months of age French-learning infants are sensitive to non-adjacent phonological dependencies (experimental part 1.1). In addition, we explored the level of generalization of these acquisitions. Frequency analyses on the French lexicon showed that the LC bias is clearly present for plosive and nasal sequences but not for fricatives. The results of a series of experiments suggest that infants preference patterns are not guided by overall cumulative frequencies in the lexicon, or frequencies of individual pairs, but by consonant classes defined by manner of articulation (experimental part 1.2). Furthermore, we explored whether the LC bias was trigger by maturational constrains or by the exposure to the input. To do so, we tested the emergence of the LC bias firstly in a population having maturational differences, that is infants born prematurely (± 3 months before term) and compared their performance to a group of full-term infants matched in maturational age, and a group of full-term infants matched in chronological age. Our results indicate that the preterm 10-month-old pattern resembles much more that of the full-term 10-month-olds (same listening age) than that of the full-term 7-month-olds (same maturational age; experimental part 1.3). Secondly we tested a population learning a language with no LC bias in its lexicon, that is Japanese-learning infants. The results of these set of experiments failed to show any preference for either LC or CL structures in Japanese-learning infants (experimental part 1.4). Taken together these results suggest that the LC bias is triggered by the exposure to the linguistic input and not only to maturational constrains. Finally, we explored whether, and if so when, phonological acquisitions during the first year of life constrain early lexical development at the level of word segmentation and word learning. Our results show that words with frequent phonotactic structures are segmented (experimental part 2.1) and learned (experimental part 2.2) at an earlier age than words with a less frequent phonotactic structure. These results suggest that prior phonotactic knowledge can constrain later lexical acquisition even when it involves a non-adjacent dependency.