PURPOSE: The quantity and quality of maternal language input in early childhood carry long-term implications for children's language development. This includes not only the quantity (e.g., total number of words) but also the quality of maternal language input (e.g., complexity and diversity of vocabulary and grammar use). One central qualitative aspect of maternal language use involves prosody. Prosody is a perceptually salient aspect of spoken language that conveys meaning, emphasis (i.e., via linguistic stress patterns), and emotion through changes in pitch (fundamental frequency (fo) modulation) and timing (rate, pausing). Prosody of a child’s main communication partner, often mothers, has been shown to play an important role in the language development of the child. There are numerous contexts in which language interactions can take place between a mother and child. Mother-child shared book reading (hereafter referred to as “shared reading”) is known to provide especially rich opportunities for language input and exposure, yet the contributions of oral reading expressiveness have yet to be specified. Initial evidence suggests that more expressive presentation of a storybook (through digital manipulation of fo mean) has a positive impact on children’s comprehension of the storybook text. Yet, it remains unclear whether maternal oral reading expressiveness is associated with children’s emerging language abilities in early childhood, particularly in toddlerhood, a critical developmental window for the early identification of late talkers. This work seeks to delineate the associations of maternal oral reading expressiveness on a child’s overall concurrent and subsequent language abilities.
PROCEDURE: 44 mother-child dyads with children classified as either late talkers (n = 21) or typical controls (n=23) were selected from an ongoing larger longitudinal study of language delay in collaboration with researchers at Northwestern University. Maternal oral reading expressiveness during shared reading of the same children’s book was quantified through prosodic transcription and acoustic analysis in Praat yielding mean fundamental frequency (fo) and rate of speech as primary variables. Child language abilities were measured concurrently at the two-year time point and subsequently at the three-year time point using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning. Maternal socioeconomic status (SES) variables were assessed via family income-to-needs ratio and maternal education level. First, independent two sample t-tests were employed to determine whether late talker and typical control groups significantly differed in maternal oral reading expressiveness (as indicated by mean fo and speech rate) or SES. Thereafter, correlation analyses were employed to examine maternal oral reading expressiveness in relation to concurrent child language abilities at age two, and subsequent child language abilities at age three. Finally, multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the extent to which maternal oral reading expressiveness may predict subsequent child language abilities approximately one year later (at age three) when controlling for SES.
RESULTS: Preliminary findings revealed no group differences in measures of maternal oral reading expressiveness (i.e., mean fo, speech rate) between mothers of late talkers versus controls. However, at the whole-group level (among all dyads), correlational analyses revealed that maternal oral reading expressiveness (e.g., mean fo) is positively associated with child receptive and expressive language abilities at both two and three years. Furthermore, through a multiple regression model, maternal oral reading expressiveness was found to significantly contribute to the variance in child language abilities at both two years and longitudinally at three years when SES factors (i.e., parent education level, income-to-need ratio) were held constant.
CONCLUSIONS: Preliminary results suggest that maternal oral reading expressiveness is significantly associated with children’s emerging language abilities in toddlerhood. These findings highlight the need for further investigation into the variable of maternal oral reading expressiveness as a possible modifiable environmental factor with the potential to facilitate positive language outcomes for children. Future and ongoing work will be necessary to obtain a more fine-grained characterization of variation in maternal oral reading expressiveness and examine maternal oral reading expressiveness in conjunction with other quantitative and qualitative indicators of maternal language input. Findings of this work carry implications for targeting reading expressiveness in parent-focused early intervention programs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/46280 |
| Date | 25 May 2023 |
| Creators | Doherty, Laura Anne |
| Contributors | Zuk, Jennifer |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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