How reliable is assessment of children’s sentence comprehension using a self-directed app? A comparison of supported versus independent use

International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders

Background Treatment fidelity refers to the degree to which an intervention is implemented as intended. Promoting treatment fidelity is important to achieve a valid comparison in intervention research. However, it is often underreported: few studies detail the use and development of fidelity measures. This study aims to promote the treatment fidelity of a modified version of the Derbyshire Language Scheme (M‐DLS), a manualised intervention for children with language difficulties, by exploring participants’ opinions on training and intervention delivery. Results inform development of a checklist and scoring system to monitor and promote treatment fidelity in a comparison trial. Method Ten student speech and language therapists (SLTs) and two research assistants (RAs) participated in the study. All received training on the M‐DLS, and 10 were video‐recorded completing role‐plays of an M‐DLS session in small …

Bilingual Building Early Sentences Therapy (B-BEST)-Pakistani heritage Mirpuri version of the evidence-based language therapy package.

medRxiv

BackgroundRandomised controlled trials (RCTs) inform healthcare decisions. Unfortunately, some published RCTs contain false data, and some appear to have been entirely fabricated. Systematic reviews are performed to identify and synthesise all RCTs which have been conducted on a given topic. This means that any of these ‘problematic studies’ are likely to be included, but there are no agreed methods for identifying them. The INSPECT-SR project is developing a tool to identify problematic RCTs in systematic reviews of healthcare-related interventions. The tool will guide the user through a series of ‘checks’ to determine a study’s authenticity. The first objective in the development process is to assemble a comprehensive list of checks to consider for inclusion.MethodsWe assembled an initial list of checks for assessing the authenticity of research studies, with no restriction to RCTs, and categorised these into five domains: Inspecting results in the paper; Inspecting the research team; Inspecting conduct, governance, and transparency; Inspecting text and publication details; Inspecting the individual participant data. We implemented this list as an online survey, and invited people with expertise and experience of assessing potentially problematic studies to participate through professional networks and online forums. Participants were invited to provide feedback on the checks on the list, and were asked to describe any additional checks they knew of, which were not featured in the list.ResultsExtensive feedback on an initial list of 102 checks was provided by 71 participants based in 16 countries across five continents. Fourteen new checks …

In a study of patterns of language laterality in left-and right-handers, Woodhead et al.(2021) noted that several tasks showed no bias to the left-hemisphere in left-handed individuals. This might appear to suggest that these functions were mediated by the two hemispheres working together equally in left-handers. Here, I consider an alternative possibility: that individuals show lateral bias on these tasks, but the bias can occur to either left or right. Further analysis of the distributions of data from individuals in Woodhead et al is compared with simulated data. The pattern of results suggests that the impression of bilateral language processing may be an artefact of reliance on group data: even though the group mean does not differ from zero, a high proportion of individuals are biased to left or right.

Bilingual Building Early Sentences Therapy (B-BEST)-Bangladeshi heritage Sylheti version of the evidence-based language therapy package.

Journal of Frailty, Sarcopenia and Falls

Objective:To implement and evaluate a Frailty Care Bundle (FCB) targeting mobilisation, nutrition, and cognition in older trauma patients to reduce hospital associated decline.Methods:We used a two group, pretest-posttest design. The FCB intervention was delivered on two orthopaedic wards and two rehabilitation wards, guided by behaviour change theory (COM-B) to implement changes in ward routines (patient mobility goals, nurse assisted mobilisation, mealtimes, communication). Primary outcomes were patient participants’ return to pre-trauma functional capability (modified Barthel Index-mBI) at 6-8 weeks post-hospital discharge and average hospital daily step-count. Statistical analysis compared pre versus post FCB group differences using ordinal regression and log-linear models.Results:We recruited 120 patients (pre n= 60 and post n= 60), and 74 (pre n= 43, post n= 36) were retained at follow-up …

Recent studies in psychology have documented how analytic flexibility can result in different results from the same dataset. Here we demonstrate a package in the R programming language, DeclareDesign, which uses simulated data to diagnose the properties of analytic designs. To illustrate features of the package, we contrast two analyses of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of GraphoGame, an intervention to help children learn to read. The initial analysis (NFER) found that the intervention was ineffective, but a subsequent reanalysis (Cambridge) concluded that GraphoGame significantly improved children’s reading. With DeclareDesign we can simulate data where the truth is known, and thus can identify which analysis is optimal for estimating the intervention effect, using “diagnosands”, including bias, precision, and power. The simulations showed that the NFER analysis accurately estimated intervention effects, whereas selection of a subset of data in the Cambridge analysis introduced substantial bias, overestimating the effect sizes. This problem was exacerbated by inclusion of multiple outcome measures in the Cambridge analysis. Much has been written about the dangers of performing reanalyses of data from RCTs that violate the randomisation of participants to conditions; simulated data make this message clear and quantify the extent to which such practices introduce bias. The simulations confirm the original NFER conclusion that the intervention has no benefit over “business as usual”. In this tutorial we demonstrate several features of DeclareDesign; this package can simulate observational and well as experimental research …

Pakistani heritage Mirpuri, Bangladeshi heritage Sylhet, and Polish versions of the evidence-based language therapy package.

Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy

OBJECTIVES: To (1) provide position-specific normative data for isometric cervical muscle strength and endurance in professional, male rugby players and (2) assess the relationship between age, height, weight, and playing position with cervical muscle strength and endurance. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. METHODS: Professional rugby players completed peak isometric cervical strength testing followed by a test of cervical muscle endurance. Descriptive statistics for continuous variables with strength normalized to body weight were performed. Multiple linear regression was used to estimate associations between strength measurements. RESULTS: In total, 136 players participated including front-row forwards (27%), other forwards (28%), and backs (45%). Front-row forwards had significantly greater peak isometric cervical muscle strength than other position groups, with backs having the lowest strength …

Proceedings of the Royal Society B

In October 2017, Proceedings of the Royal Society B published an article by Le Floch & Ropars [1] claiming that dyslexia could be caused by a visual anomaly that led to confusion between images from the two eyes when reading letters. This article attracted considerable media attention, with an Altmetric score of 829, including coverage by 83 news outlets, and has subsequently been cited in promotional material for devices that are designed to ameliorate the problem. A number of international experts raised concerns about the study on the postpublication peer review site PubPeer [2], but this has not led to any moderation of the claims made for therapeutic implications of the study. Given that our view is that the study suffers from methodological, interpretive and ethical problems that should have precluded publication, we are grateful to the editors for providing this opportunity to document these issues.

European Journal of Special Needs Education

The present study aimed to investigate 1) whether country categories and type of DLD predict the type of therapy (direct, indirect, and mixed) the child receives, and 2) whether there is an association between country categories, type of therapy, and type of DLD (receptive, expressive, and mixed). European countries were categorised based on Sapir’s typology into Continental, AngloSaxon, Nordic and Mediterranean groups. A fifth group i.e. Central European (including Baltic countries) was added. The data to address these questions comes from an online survey, translated and adapted into 30 languages, and is based on reports by 4685 professionals delivering services for children with DLD. This survey was developed by the COST Action IS1406 members and distributed online among practitioners in the year 2017 across European countries. Results indicated that country categories and type of DLD predicted …

Neurobiology of Language

In this exploratory study we compare and contrast two methods for deriving a laterality index (LI) from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data: the weighted bootstrapped mean from the Laterality Toolbox (toolbox method), and a novel method that uses subtraction of activations from homologous regions in left and right hemispheres to give an array of difference scores (mirror method). Data came from 31 individuals who had been selected to include a high proportion of people with atypical laterality when tested with functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD). On two tasks, word generation and semantic matching, the mirror method generally gave better agreement with fTCD laterality than the toolbox method, both for individual regions of interest, and for a large region corresponding to the middle cerebral artery. LI estimates from this method had much smaller confidence intervals (CIs) than …

Introduction Both Building Early Sentences Therapy (BEST) and the Derbyshire Language Scheme (DLS) are effective in improving children’s use and understanding of simple sentences. (1, 2). BEST is based on ‘usage-based’ linguistic theory. The underlying hypothesis being that by systematically manipulating the nature and quantity of the language a child hears, BEST can promote abstract, flexible knowledge and use of a range of sentence structures, and so accelerate future language learning (3). Comparisons of effective interventions enable practitioners, parents, and services to make informed choices regarding which work best for a given child, context, or family preference. Furthermore, comparing interventions delivered with the same dosage, delivery context, level of treatment fidelity and similar resources tests whether it is the specific learning mechanisms exploited by the interventions which promote change. Aim(s) to determine whether • BEST and an adapted DLS (A-DLS) differ in efficacy, • BEST and A-DLS differ in the degree to which benefits generalise to broader language and communication skills, • BEST accelerates progress after intervention as predicted by usage-based theory. Methods Design: Twenty schools were independently randomised to receive BEST or A-DLS. Measures were collected at baseline, outcome (immediately post-intervention), and follow-up (~2 months post-intervention). Participants: Consenting children aged 3;05–4;05, identified by teachers as monolingual English speakers, and not meeting age-related expectations in their language development, were assessed and included if they: Scored ≤ 16th …

HRB Open Research

Background Two core outcome sets for childhood obesity prevention have been developed; standardised sets of outcome measurement instruments for these core outcome sets are currently being developed. Core outcome sets and standardised measurement sets can reduce heterogeneity and improve evidence syntheses for trials of interventions to prevent childhood obesity and/or interventions to improve child health behaviours related to childhood obesity. Such benefits are only realised if core outcome sets and standardised measurement sets are used in trials. The aims of this study are 1) to examine trialists’ awareness and attitudes towards the two existing core outcome sets and factors influencing their use; 2) to explore the characteristics of outcome measurement instruments that trialists currently use; and 3) to better understand how trialists choose outcome measurement instruments and the factors that influence those choices. Methods A cross-sectional online survey will be conducted with researchers involved in the design and/or conduct of trials of interventions to prevent childhood obesity and/or to improve child health behaviours related to childhood obesity, in children aged 0 to 5 years (trialists). Trialists will be recruited using purposive sampling, and will complete a 22-item survey examining trialist characteristics, awareness of the existing core outcome sets, factors influencing use of the existing core outcome sets, characteristics of measurement instruments, how trialists choose measurement instruments, and factors influencing choice of measurement instrument …

Urology

AS statistical editors and reviewers, we have noticed that observational research papers submitted for publication often share a common set of problems with respect to the issue of causality. Causality can be conceptualized in counterfactual terms: would the outcome be different if we change what we do? For instance, we say that smoking causes cancer, because if we reduce smoking, we reduce cancer; conversely, even though ice cream sales closely track the rate of shark bites, we avoid a causal conclusion because banning ice cream would not make ocean swimming any safer. Here we suggest guidelines for reporting of observational studies where investigators calculate statistical associations between an exposuredsuch as a drug, a change in surgical technique, or a lifestyle factor like smoking or dietdand an outcomedsuch as cancer diagnosis or cancer progression. The core issue is that authors all too …

Frontiers in Psychology

BackgroundIn order to leverage the potential benefits of technology to speech and language therapy language assessment processes, large samples of naturalistic language data must be collected and analysed. These samples enable the development and testing of novel software applications with data relevant to their intended clinical application. However, the collection and analysis of such data can be costly and time-consuming. This paper describes the development of a novel application designed to elicit and analyse young children’s story retell narratives to provide metrics regarding the child’s use of grammatical structures (micro-structure) and story grammar (macro-structure elements). Key aspects for development were (1) methods to collect story retells, ensure accurate transcription and segmentation of utterances; (2) testing the reliability of the application to analyse micro-structure elements in children’s story retells and (3) development of an algorithm to analyse narrative macro-structure elements.MethodsA co-design process was used to design an app which would be used to gather story retell samples from children using mobile technology. A citizen science approach using mainstream marketing via online channels, the media and billboard ads was used to encourage participation from children across the United Kingdom. A stratified sampling framework was used to ensure a representative sample was obtained across age, gender and five bands of socio-economic disadvantage using partial postcodes and the relevant indices of deprivation. Trained Research Associates (RA) completed transcription and micro and macro …

Early years education helps to build a sturdy foundation for the whole of a child’s life. Similarly, language and communication underpins learning across the early years foundation stage (EYFS), its importance is reflected in the EYFS curriculum and in recent national initiatives (ICAN and RCSLT, 2018). The number of children with additional needs in language and communication is growing with children from socially disadvantaged groups at greater risk (Law et al., 2017). Increasing levels of need and growing waiting lists are putting pressure on Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) and early years practitioners (EYPs) are providing a lot of support in this area, though understanding of what this looks like is limited (Dobinson and Dockrell, 2021).

Background: Organisations known as paper mills charge authors to place fraudulent papers in the academic literature. Publishers have been slow to tackle the problem, but are now starting to devise methods for identifying paper mill products. However, little attention has been paid to the topic of complicit editors, who can take over special issues of journals and then publish many fraudulent articles. To date, activities of such editors have been documented by a handful of sleuths on social media and on the website PubPeer. This paper reports a descriptive study that documents more systematically the presence of “red flags” indicative of paper mill activity in special issues from the Wiley-Hindawi Open Access publishing partnership.Methods: A spreadsheet was created from the Hindawi website with records for all published articles during 2022. Initial analysis focused on initial Editor Response Time (RT) in ten journals that had been identified by sleuths as having high rates of problematic papers. In a second step, the whole dataset was scrutinized to identify editors who had handled at least 10 articles. These were divided into those who had had at least one PubPeer comment flagging dubious content or citations, and those with no PubPeer comments.Results: A cutoff of 22 days was identified as corresponding to the 2nd percentile of Editor RT for regular articles not in special issues. Plots show that in the 10 selected journals, some special issues have 50% or more of Editor RTs below this cutoff, raising questions as to whether an appropriate peer review process had taken place. Editors with articles flagged on PubPeer processed significantly …

Fraudulent published papers used to be thought to be rare, but in recent years there has been growing awareness of coordinated activities by organizations that charge authors a fee to plant articles in reputable journals. These are known as paper mills. We reflect here on how Mind, Brain and Education suffered from such an attack in 2022 and 2023, discussing what we have learnt from this experience about how paper mills might operate in social sciences, how to spot signs that an article is fraudulent, and what steps might be taken to prevent such attacks in future.

The current study will evaluate BBC Education’s Tiny Happy People initiative (https://www. bbc. co. uk/tiny happy-people) which seeks to reduce the impact of socio-economic disadvantage on children’s language skills before they arrive at primary school. BBC Education have created videos for parents and other caregivers with information about child development, tips and activities as well as other content of interest. The primary aim of the current study is to find out whether a service that delivers the video materials to parents by text message, with additional support in the form of video calls with a Speech and Language Therapist where needed, promotes child language when children turn 3 ½ years old. We will also assess the impact of the intervention on a) caregiver confidence and b) caregiver-child interaction. This study will follow on from a prior evaluation of this text-message service that tested the effect of texting the video content to families experiencing relative social disadvantage starting when their children were 4-10 months old and finishing when they were 24 months old (see clincialtrials. gov and https://osf. io/kme68/for pre-registration of full trial; see https://osf. io/7mw3q/for pre-registration of a further study focusing on home video data when children were 12 months old). 435 families across the four nations of the UK took part (one dropping out after randomisation, leaving 434). We found that texting BBC Tiny Happy People video content was acceptable to caregivers (across all seven dimensions of the Sekhon framework), that 91% of families would recommend the service to a friend, that the service promoted caregiver linguistic …

Journal of Child Language

This study explored responsive and linguistic parent input features during parent-child interactions and investigated how four input categories related to children’s production of diverse, simple sentences. Of primary interest was parent use of responsive, simple declarative input sentences. Responsive and linguistic features of parent input to 20 typically developing toddlers at 1;9 were coded during play in a laboratory playroom, then classified into four input categories: responsive, declarative, responsive declarative, and neither responsive nor simple declarative. The percentage of each input category was related to child sentence diversity at 2;6 using Spearman correlations. Parent use of responsive declarative and declarative utterances were both rare. Responsive input was positively correlated with child sentence diversity, and the neither category was negatively correlated with child sentence diversity. The …

Journal of Child Language

What are the constraints, cues, and mechanisms that help learners create successful word-meaning mappings? This study takes up linguistic disjunction and looks at cues and mechanisms that can help children learn the meaning of or. We first used a large corpus of parent-child interactions to collect statistics on or uses. Children started producing or between 18-30 months and by 42 months, their rate of production reached a plateau. Second, we annotated for the interpretation of disjunction in child-directed speech. Parents used or mostly as exclusive disjunction, typically accompanied by rise-fall intonation and logically inconsistent disjuncts. But when these two cues were absent, disjunction was generally not exclusive. Our computational modeling suggests that an ideal learner could successfully interpret an English disjunction (as exclusive or not) by mapping forms to meanings after partitioning the input …

Journal of Child Language

The present study examined the links between haptic word processing speed, vocabulary, and inhibitory control among bilingual children. Three main hypotheses were tested: faster haptic processing speed, measured by the Computerized Comprehension Task at age 1;11, would be associated with larger concurrent vocabulary and greater longitudinal vocabulary growth. Second, early vocabulary size would be associated with greater vocabulary growth at 3;0 and 5;0. Finally, faster haptic processing speed would be associated with greater concurrent inhibitory control, as measured by the Shape Stroop Task. The results revealed that haptic processing speed was associated with concurrent vocabulary, but not predictive of later language skills. Also, early decontextualized vocabulary was predictive of vocabulary at 3;0. Finally, haptic processing speed measured in the non-dominant language was associated with …

Journal of Child Language

PurposeLittle is known about the relationship between sentence production and phonological working memory in school-age children. To fill this gap, we examined how strongly these constructs correlate. We also compared diagnostic groups’ working memory abilities to see if differences co-occurred with qualitative differences in their sentences.MethodWe conducted Bayesian analyses on data from seven- to nine-year-old children (n = 165 typical language, n = 81 dyslexia-only, n = 43 comorbid dyslexia and developmental language disorder). We correlated sentence production and working memory scores and conducted t tests between groups’ working memory scores and sentence length, lexical diversity, and complexity.ResultsCorrelations were positive but weak. The dyslexic and typical groups had dissimilar working memory and comparable sentence quality. The dyslexic and comorbid groups had …

Journal of Child Language

Parental language input influences child language outcomes but may vary based on certain characteristics. This research examined how parental language differs during two contexts for toddlers at varying likelihood of autism based on their developmental skills. Parental language (quantity, quality, and pragmatic functions) was analyzed during dyadic play and mealtime interactions as a secondary data analysis of observational data from a study of toddlers at elevated and lower likelihood of autism. Child developmental skills and sensory processing were also assessed. Parents used more words per minute, directives, and verbs during play and more adjectives, descriptions, and questions during mealtime. Parental language differed based on child fine motor skills, receptive language, and levels of sensory hyporesponsiveness but not autism likelihood. Overall, this study found that parental language varies …

Journal of Child Language

Previous research has shown language-specific features play a guiding role in how children develop expression of events with speech and gestures. This study adopts a multimodal approach and examines Mandarin Chinese, a language that features context use and verb serializations. Forty children (four-to-seven years old) and ten adults were asked to describe fourteen video stimuli depicting different types of causal events involving location/state changes. Participants’ speech was segmented into clauses and co-occurring gestures were analyzed in relation to causation. The results show that the older the children, the greater the use of contextual clauses which contribute meaning to event descriptions. It is not until the age of six that children used adult-like structures – namely, using single gestures representing causing actions and aligning them with verb serializations in single clauses. We discuss the …

Journal of Child Language

This study compared a unidimensional model of vocabulary and a two-factor model comprising vocabulary breadth and depth in a second language (L2). A total of 167 Chinese Grade 4 and 5 primary school children (Meanage = 9.96 years old) learning English as an L2 participated in this study, and they were tested on four English vocabulary tests. Our results of confirmatory factor analyses indicate that vocabulary breadth and depth were not two distinct dimensions, and the unidimensional model was supported. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Journal of Child Language

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) has been widely used to measure children’s early language development in a variety of languages. This study investigates the utility of MLU to measure language development in four agglutinative and morphologically complex Southern Bantu languages. Using a variant of MLU, MLU3, based on the three longest sentences children produced, we analysed the utterances of 448 toddlers (16-32 months) collected using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, a parent-report tool. MLU3, measured in words (MLU3-w) and morphemes (MLU3-m), significantly correlated with age and other indices of language growth (e.g., grammar and vocabulary). MLU3 measures also accounted for significant variance in language development particular morphosyntactic development. Our results suggest that MLU3-m is a more sensitive measure than MLU3-w. We conclude that …

Journal of Child Language

Italian vowels have a shorter duration before a geminate than before a singleton consonant, but a longer duration in syllables carrying stress. We asked whether children can produce the differentiation in vowel duration in singleton/geminate contexts reported for adults and whether their production changes depending on position of primary stress. Italian children (three-to-six-year-olds) and adults performed a nonword repetition. Each nonword appeared in four contexts, with the stressed/unstressed vowel preceding/following the singleton/geminate: /paˈpaso/, /papˈpaso/, ˈpapaso/, /ˈpappaso/. Acoustic analyses on the duration of the vowel preceding (V1) and following (V2) the medial consonant showed a type of consonant by age group interaction: the difference in vowel duration between children and adults was greater for geminate than singleton contexts, and was greater when the vowel carried stress. When …

Journal of Child Language

This study aims to investigate the practice patterns used by Portuguese speech-language pathologists (SLPs) with preschool-age children with pragmatic impairment and to identify the actual need(s) perceived by SLPs in this field. A total of 351 SLPs responded. The results reveal that 81.5 per cent of the respondents (n=286) reported working or had previously worked with preschool-age children with pragmatic impairment arising from autism spectrum disorder, developmental language disorder, or both. Considering the clinical practice, similarities and differences were found, many of which are due not to the inherent characteristics of each disorder but to the scarcity of research in clinical pragmatics. These results are also reflected in the needs perceived by SLPs and the degree of confidence with which they work with these children. Implications for clinical practice and directions for future research are discussed.

Journal of Child Language

We investigate whether child-directed speech (CDS) contains a higher proportion of canonical pronunciations compared to adult-directed speech (ADS), focusing on Korean noun stem-final obstruent variation. In a word-teaching task, we observed that mothers use a higher rate of canonical pronunciation when addressing infants than when addressing adults. In a follow-up experiment, adults exhibited a higher rate of canonical pronunciation for high- than low-frequency words. Additional analyses conducted with only the high-frequency monosyllabic words from the two experiments found no evidence for simplified phonology in CDS when lexical frequency was controlled for. Our findings suggest that the higher rate of canonical forms in CDS, with respect to Korean morphophonological rules, is mediated by the frequency of word usage. Thus, the didactic function of CDS phonology appears to be a byproduct of …

Journal of Child Language

Parental language input influences child language outcomes but may vary based on certain characteristics. This research examined how parental language differs during two contexts for toddlers at varying likelihood of autism based on their developmental skills. Parental language (quantity, quality, and pragmatic functions) was analyzed during dyadic play and mealtime interactions as a secondary data analysis of observational data from a study of toddlers at elevated and lower likelihood of autism. Child developmental skills and sensory processing were also assessed. Parents used more words per minute, directives, and verbs during play and more adjectives, descriptions, and questions during mealtime. Parental language differed based on child fine motor skills, receptive language, and levels of sensory hyporesponsiveness but not autism likelihood. Overall, this study found that parental language varies …

Journal of Child Language

Based on the linguistic analysis of game explanations and retellings, the paper’s goal is to investigate the relation of preschool children’s situated discourse competence and iconic gestures in different communicative genres, focussing on reinforcing and supplementary speech-gesture-combinations. To this end, a method was developed to evaluate discourse competence as a context-sensitive and interactively embedded phenomenon. The so-called GLOBE-model was adapted to assess discourse competence in relation to interactive scaffolding. The findings show clear links between the children’s competence and their parents’ scaffolding. We suggest this to be evidence of a fine-tuned interactive support system. The results also indicate strong relations between higher discourse competence and increased frequency of iconic gestures. This applies in particular to reinforcing gestures. The results are interpreted …

Journal of Child Language

Parental language input influences child language outcomes but may vary based on certain characteristics. This research examined how parental language differs during two contexts for toddlers at varying likelihood of autism based on their developmental skills. Parental language (quantity, quality, and pragmatic functions) was analyzed during dyadic play and mealtime interactions as a secondary data analysis of observational data from a study of toddlers at elevated and lower likelihood of autism. Child developmental skills and sensory processing were also assessed. Parents used more words per minute, directives, and verbs during play and more adjectives, descriptions, and questions during mealtime. Parental language differed based on child fine motor skills, receptive language, and levels of sensory hyporesponsiveness but not autism likelihood. Overall, this study found that parental language varies …

Journal of Child Language

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) has been widely used to measure children’s early language development in a variety of languages. This study investigates the utility of MLU to measure language development in four agglutinative and morphologically complex Southern Bantu languages. Using a variant of MLU, MLU3, based on the three longest sentences children produced, we analysed the utterances of 448 toddlers (16-32 months) collected using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, a parent-report tool. MLU3, measured in words (MLU3-w) and morphemes (MLU3-m), significantly correlated with age and other indices of language growth (e.g., grammar and vocabulary). MLU3 measures also accounted for significant variance in language development particular morphosyntactic development. Our results suggest that MLU3-m is a more sensitive measure than MLU3-w. We conclude that …

Journal of Child Language

The process by which infants learn verbs through daily social interactions is not well-understood. This study investigated caregivers’ use of verbs, which have highly abstract meanings, during unscripted toy-play. We examined how verbs co-occurred with distributional and embodied factors including pronouns, caregivers’ manual actions, and infants’ locomotion, gaze, and object-touching. Object-action verbs were used significantly more often during caregiver-infant joint attention interactions. Movement and cognition verbs showed distinct co-occurrences with different contexts. Cognition and volition verbs were differentiated by pronouns. These findings provide evidence for how verb acquisition may be supported by the distributional and embodied contexts in caregiver-infant interactions.

Journal of Child Language

This study investigated differences in adult-child language interactions when parents and their three-to-four-year old children engage in wordless book reading, text-and-picture book reading and a small-world toy play activity. Twenty-two parents recorded themselves completing each activity at home with their child. Parent input was compared across contexts, focusing on interactive and conceptual domains: use of open prompts, expansions or extensions of children’s utterances, and use of decontextualised (abstract) language. Use of linguistic expansions was greater during book reading than toy play. Parents used open questions and added contingent conceptual information more often when reading wordless books than in both other conditions. Findings suggest that wordless books may combine the benefits of open-endedness and linguistic content based around a narrative. Parents’ use of abstract language …

Journal of Child Language

Parental input is considered a key predictor of language achievement during the first years of life, yet relatively few studies have assessed its effects on longer-term outcomes. We assess the effects of parental quantity of speech, use of parentese (the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech), and turn-taking in infancy, on child language at 5 years. Using a longitudinal dataset of daylong LENA recordings collected with the same group of English-speaking infants (N=44) at 6, 10, 14, 18, 24 months and then again at 5 years, we demonstrate that parents’ consistent (defined as stable and high) use of parentese in infancy was a potent predictor of lexical diversity, mean length of utterance, and frequency of conversational turn-taking between children and adults at Kindergarten entry. Together, these findings highlight the potential importance of a high-quality language learning environment in infancy …

Journal of Child Language

Research shows that infants and preschoolers can learn novel words equally well through addressed speech as through overhearing two adults. However, most of this research draws from samples of ethnic majority children. The current study compares word learning in preschoolers (M age = 5;6) with an ethnic minority and an ethnic majority background (N = 132). An experimenter of the majority group (representative for most teachers in Flemish education) told a story in three different interaction situations: Addressed Speech, Overhearing Classroom and Overhearing Two Adults. Results show that children of both ethnic groups learn novel words in Addressed Speech and in Overhearing Classroom equally well. However, minority children learned significantly fewer words in Overhearing Two Adults. This study suggests important differences in how ethnic majority and minority children learn through indirect …

Journal of Child Language

Parental language input influences child language outcomes but may vary based on certain characteristics. This research examined how parental language differs during two contexts for toddlers at varying likelihood of autism based on their developmental skills. Parental language (quantity, quality, and pragmatic functions) was analyzed during dyadic play and mealtime interactions as a secondary data analysis of observational data from a study of toddlers at elevated and lower likelihood of autism. Child developmental skills and sensory processing were also assessed. Parents used more words per minute, directives, and verbs during play and more adjectives, descriptions, and questions during mealtime. Parental language differed based on child fine motor skills, receptive language, and levels of sensory hyporesponsiveness but not autism likelihood. Overall, this study found that parental language varies …