Cross-cultural evidence for multimodal motherese: Asian Indian mothers' adaptive use of synchronous words and gestures

Touch to learn: Multisensory input supports word learning and processing

Infants experience language in rich multisensory environments. For example, they may first be exposed to the word applesauce while touching, tasting, smelling, and seeing applesauce. In three experiments using different methods we asked whether the number of distinct senses linked with the semantic features of objects would impact word recognition and learning. Specifically, in Experiment 1 we asked whether words linked with more multisensory experiences were learned earlier than words linked fewer multisensory experiences. In Experiment 2, we asked whether 2-year-olds' known words linked with more multisensory experiences were better recognized than those linked with fewer. Finally, in Experiment 3, we taught 2-year-olds labels for novel objects that were linked with either just visual or visual and tactile experiences and asked whether this impacted their ability to learn the new label-to-object mappings. Results converge to support an account in which richer multisensory experiences better support word learning. We discuss two pathways through which rich multisensory experiences might support word learning.

Joint Engagement in Mother-Child Dyads of Autistic and Non-Autistic Children Among Asian Indian Tamil Speaking Families

This study profiled various levels of engagement and related communication behaviours among 50 Asian Indian Tamil autistic children (AUT) and their mothers. The interaction was compared with two groups of mother-child dyads of non-autistic (NA) children, 50 in each group, matched for chronological age (CA), and for language level (LL). Results indicated that despite mother's efforts to engage with their children, autistic children were often 'engaged with objects' or remained 'unengaged' due to children's preference for solitary play, while NA children were often engaged in 'co-ordinated' and 'people engagement'. Across the three groups, mothers predominantly took the lead and dominated the interaction, irrespective of children's language levels. These initiations by the mothers were often to provide instructions and to ask 'What' questions. Autistic children initiated communication predominantly to ask for an object and responded often in the form of negations and protests with limited verbal output or non-verbally. Most of the communication behaviours of both children and mothers in AUT group was quantitatively and qualitatively different when compared to those in both the NA groups, indicating unique nature of interactions despite matching for CA or LL. The observations from the study highlights the need for considering adult's contingent behaviours also, while assessing communication skills of autistic children in order to provide effective intervention.

Effects of English versus Spanish language exposure on basic multisensory attention skills across 3 to 36 months of age

Recent research has demonstrated that individual differences in infant attention to faces and voices of women speaking predict language outcomes in childhood. These findings have been generated using two new audiovisual attention assessments appropriate for infants and young children, the Multisensory Attention Assessment Protocol (MAAP) and the Intersensory Processing Efficiency Protocol (IPEP). The MAAP and IPEP assess three basic attention skills (sustaining attention, shifting/disengaging, intersensory matching), as well as distractibility, deployed in the context of naturalistic audiovisual social (women speaking English) and nonsocial events (objects impacting a surface). Might children with differential exposure to Spanish versus English show different patterns of attention to social events on these protocols as a function of language familiarity? We addressed this question in several ways using children (n = 81 dual-language learners; n = 23 monolingual-language learners) from South Florida, tested longitudinally across 3-36 months. Surprisingly, results indicated no significant English language advantage on any attention measure for children from monolingual English versus dual English-Spanish language environments. Second, for dual-language learners, exposure to English changed across age, decreasing slightly from 3-12 months and then increasing considerably by 36 months. Furthermore, for dual-language learners, structural equation modeling analyses revealed no English language advantage on the MAAP or IPEP as a function of degree of English language exposure. The few relations found were in the direction of greater performance for children with greater Spanish exposure. Together, findings indicate no English language advantage for basic multisensory attention skills assessed by the MAAP or IPEP between the ages of 3 to 36 months. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Mothers' use of touch across infants' development and its implications for word learning: Evidence from Korean dyadic interactions

Caregivers' touches that occur alongside words and utterances could aid in the detection of word/utterance boundaries and the mapping of word forms to word meanings. We examined changes in caregivers' use of touches with their speech directed to infants using a multimodal cross-sectional corpus of 35 Korean mother-child dyads across three age groups of infants (8, 14, and 27 months). We tested the hypothesis that caregivers' frequency and use of touches with speech change with infants' development. Results revealed that the frequency of word/utterance-touch alignment as well as word + touch co-occurrence is highest in speech addressed to the youngest group of infants. Thus, this study provides support for the hypothesis that caregivers' use of touch during dyadic interactions is sensitive to infants' age in a way similar to caregivers' use of speech alone and could provide cues useful to infants' language learning at critical points in early development.

Can gesture input support toddlers' fast mapping?

Forty-eight toddlers participated in a word-learning task to assess gesture input on mapping nonce words to unfamiliar objects. Receptive fast mapping and expressive naming for target object-word pairs were tested in three conditions - with a point, with a shape gesture, and in a no-gesture, word-only condition. No statistically significant effect of gesture for receptive fast-mapping was found but age was a factor. Two year olds outperformed one year olds for both measures. Only one girl in the one-year-old group correctly named any items. There was a significant interaction between gesture and gender for expressive naming. Two-year-old girls were six times more likely than two-year-old boys to correctly name items given point and shape gestures; whereas, boys named more items taught with the word only than with a point or shape gesture. The role of gesture input remains unclear, particularly for children under two years and for toddler boys.

Parent-Child Joint Behaviors in Novel Object Play Create High-Quality Data for Word Learning

This research takes a dyadic approach to study early word learning and focuses on toddlers' (N = 20, age: 17-23 months) information seeking and parents' information providing behaviors and the ways the two are coupled in real-time parent-child interactions. Using head-mounted eye tracking, this study provides the first detailed comparison of children's and their parents' behavioral and attentional patterns in two free-play contexts: one with novel objects with to-be-learned names (Learning condition) and the other with familiar objects with known names (Play condition). Children and parents in the Learning condition modified their individual and joint behaviors when encountering novel objects with to-be-learned names, which created clearer signals that reduced referential ambiguity and potentially facilitated word learning.

What leads to coordinated attention in parent-toddler interactions? Children's hearing status matters

Coordinated attention between children and their parents plays an important role in their social, language, and cognitive development. The current study used head-mounted eye-trackers to investigate the effects of children's prelingual hearing loss on how they achieve coordinated attention with their hearing parents during free-flowing object play. We found that toddlers with hearing loss (age: 24-37 months) had similar overall gaze patterns (e.g., gaze length and proportion of face looking) as their normal-hearing peers. In addition, children's hearing status did not affect how likely parents and children attended to the same object at the same time during play. However, when following parents' attention, children with hearing loss used both parents' gaze directions and hand actions as cues, whereas children with normal hearing mainly relied on parents' hand actions. The diversity of pathways leading to coordinated attention suggests the flexibility and robustness of developing systems in using multiple pathways to achieve the same functional end.

Maternal object naming is less adapted to preterm infants' than to term infants' word mapping

BACKGROUND

Term infants learn word-object relations in their first year during multisensory interactions with caregivers. Although preterm infants often experience language delays, little is known about how caregivers contribute to their early word-object learning. The present longitudinal study compared maternal naming and word learning in these infant groups.

METHODS

Forty moderately preterm and 40 term infants participated at 6-9 and 12 months with their mothers. At each visit, mothers named two novel objects during play, and infants' learning was assessed using dynamic displays of the familiar and novel (mismatched) word-object relations. Infants' general cognitive, language, and motoric abilities were evaluated. Maternal multisensory naming was coded for synchrony between the target words and object motions and other naming styles.

RESULTS

During play, although overall maternal naming-style was similar across infant groups within visits, naming frequency increased to term but not preterm infants, from visit 1 to 2. On the test at visit 1, although the term infants' looked equally to novel and familiar word-object relations, their looking to the novel relations correlated positively with maternal synchrony use but inversely with naming frequency. At visit 2, term infants looked longer to the novel relations. In contrast, preterm infants showed no looking preference at either visit. Neither was their word-object learning correlated with maternal naming. Their cognition, language, and motor scores were attenuated when compared to term infants on the Bayley-III but not their MCDI vocabulary.

CONCLUSIONS

Less adaptive maternal naming and delayed word mapping in moderately preterm infants underscore a critical need for multisensory language intervention prior to first-word onset to alleviate its cascading effects on later language.

Parents' gesture adaptations to children with autism spectrum disorder

The present study focused on parents' social cue use in relation to young children's attention. Participants were ten parent-child dyads; all children were 36 to 60 months old and were either typically developing (TD) or were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children wore a head-mounted camera that recorded the proximate child view while their parent played with them. The study compared the following between the TD and ASD groups: (a) frequency of parent's gesture use; (b) parents' monitoring of their child's face; and (c) how children looked at parents' gestures. Results from Bayesian estimation indicated that, compared to the TD group, parents of children with ASD produced more gestures, more closely monitored their children's faces, and provided more scaffolding for their children's visual experiences. Our findings suggest the importance of further investigating parents' visual and gestural scaffolding as a potential developmental mechanism for children's early learning, including for children with ASD.

Caregiver Touch-Speech Communication and Infant Responses in 12-Month-Olds at High Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Multimodal communication may facilitate attention in infants. This study examined the presentation of caregiver touch-only and touch + speech input to 12-month-olds at high (HRA) and low risk for ASD. Findings indicated that, although both groups received a greater number of touch + speech bouts compared to touch-only bouts, the duration of overall touch that overlapped with speech was significantly greater in the HRA group. Additionally, HRA infants were less responsive to touch-only bouts compared to touch + speech bouts suggesting that their mothers may use more touch + speech communication to elicit infant responses. Nonetheless, the exact role of touch in multimodal communication directed towards infants at high risk for ASD warrants further exploration.

Stacking the evidence: Parents' use of acoustic packaging with preschoolers

Segmenting continuous events into discrete actions is critical for understanding the world. As infants may lack top-down knowledge of event structure, caregivers provide audiovisual cues to guide the process, aligning action descriptions with event boundaries to increase their salience. This acoustic packaging may be specific to infant-directed speech, but little is known about when and why the use of this cue wanes. We explore whether acoustic packaging persists in parents' teaching of 2.5-5.5-year-old children about various toys. Parents produced a smaller percentage of action speech relative to studies with infants. However, action speech largely remained more aligned to action boundaries relative to non-action speech. Further, for the more challenging novel toys, parents modulated their use of acoustic packaging, providing it more for those children with lower vocabularies. Our findings suggest that acoustic packaging persists beyond interactions with infants, underscoring the utility of multimodal cues for learning, particularly for less knowledgeable learners in challenging learning environments.

Word-object and action-object association learning across early development

Successful communication often involves comprehension of both spoken language and observed actions with and without objects. Even very young infants can learn associations between actions and objects as well as between words and objects. However, in daily life, children are usually confronted with both kinds of input simultaneously. Choosing the critical information to attend to in such situations might help children structure the input, and thereby, allow for successful learning. In the current study, we therefore, investigated the developmental time course of children's and adults' word and action learning when given the opportunity to learn both word-object and action-object associations for the same object. All participants went through a learning phase and a test phase. In the learning phase, they were presented with two novel objects which were associated with a distinct novel name (e.g., "Look, a Tanu") and a distinct novel action (e.g., moving up and down while tilting sideways). In the test phase, participants were presented with both objects on screen in a baseline phase, then either heard one of the two labels or saw one of the two actions in a prime phase, and then saw the two objects again on screen in a recognition phase. Throughout the trial, participants' target looking was recorded to investigate whether participants looked at the target object upon hearing its label or seeing its action, and thus, would show learning of the word-object and action-object associations. Growth curve analyses revealed that 12-month-olds showed modest learning of action-object associations, 36-month-olds learned word-object associations, and adults learned word-object and action-object associations. These results highlight how children attend to the different information types from the two modalities through which communication is addressed to them. Over time, with increased exposure to systematic word-object mappings, children attend less to action-object mappings, with the latter potentially being mediated by word-object learning even in adulthood. Thus, choosing between different kinds of input that may be more relevant in their rich environment encompassing different modalities might help learning at different points in development.

Vocal and Tactile Input to Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Purpose Caregivers may show greater use of nonauditory signals in interactions with children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). This study explored the frequency of maternal touch and the temporal alignment of touch with speech in the input to children who are DHH and age-matched peers with normal hearing. Method We gathered audio and video recordings of mother-child free-play interactions. Maternal speech units were annotated from audio recordings, and touch events were annotated from video recordings. Analyses explored the frequency and duration of touch events and the temporal alignment of touch with speech. Results Greater variance was observed in the frequency of touch and its total duration in the input to children who are DHH. Furthermore, touches produced by mothers of children who are DHH were significantly more likely to be aligned with speech than touches produced by mothers of children with normal hearing. Conclusion Caregivers' modifications in the input to children who are DHH are observed in the combination of speech with touch. The implications for such patterns and how they may impact children's attention and access to the speech signal are discussed.

Preverbal infants utilize cross-modal semantic congruency in artificial grammar acquisition

Learning in a multisensory world is challenging as the information from different sensory dimensions may be inconsistent and confusing. By adulthood, learners optimally integrate bimodal (e.g. audio-visual, AV) stimulation by both low-level (e.g. temporal synchrony) and high-level (e.g. semantic congruency) properties of the stimuli to boost learning outcomes. However, it is unclear how this capacity emerges and develops. To approach this question, we examined whether preverbal infants were capable of utilizing high-level properties with grammar-like rule acquisition. In three experiments, we habituated pre-linguistic infants with an audio-visual (AV) temporal sequence that resembled a grammar-like rule (A-A-B). We varied the cross-modal semantic congruence of the AV stimuli (Exp 1: congruent syllables/faces; Exp 2: incongruent syllables/shapes; Exp 3: incongruent beeps/faces) while all the other low-level properties (e.g. temporal synchrony, sensory energy) were constant. Eight- to ten-month-old infants only learned the grammar-like rule from AV congruent stimuli pairs (Exp 1), not from incongruent AV pairs (Exp 2, 3). Our results show that similar to adults, preverbal infants' learning is influenced by a high-level multisensory integration gating system, pointing to a perceptual origin of bimodal learning advantage that was not previously acknowledged.

Dog-directed speech: why do we use it and do dogs pay attention to it?

Pet-directed speech is strikingly similar to infant-directed speech, a peculiar speaking pattern with higher pitch and slower tempo known to engage infants' attention and promote language learning. Here, we report the first investigation of potential factors modulating the use of dog-directed speech, as well as its immediate impact on dogs' behaviour. We recorded adult participants speaking in front of pictures of puppies, adult and old dogs, and analysed the quality of their speech. We then performed playback experiments to assess dogs' reaction to dog-directed speech compared with normal speech. We found that human speakers used dog-directed speech with dogs of all ages and that the acoustic structure of dog-directed speech was mostly independent of dog age, except for sound pitch which was relatively higher when communicating with puppies. Playback demonstrated that, in the absence of other non-auditory cues, puppies were highly reactive to dog-directed speech, and that the pitch was a key factor modulating their behaviour, suggesting that this specific speech register has a functional value in young dogs. Conversely, older dogs did not react differentially to dog-directed speech compared with normal speech. The fact that speakers continue to use dog-directed with older dogs therefore suggests that this speech pattern may mainly be a spontaneous attempt to facilitate interactions with non-verbal listeners.

The Origins of Verb Learning: Preverbal and Postverbal Infants' Learning of Word-Action Relations

PURPOSE

This experiment examined English- or Spanish-learning preverbal (8-9 months, n = 32) and postverbal (12-14 months, n = 40) infants' learning of word-action pairings prior to and after the transition to verb comprehension and its relation to naturally learned vocabulary.

METHOD

Infants of both verbal levels were first habituated to 2 dynamic video displays of novel word-action pairings, the words /wem/ or /bæf/, spoken synchronously with an adult shaking or looming an object, and tested with interchanged (switched) versus same word-action pairings. Mothers of the postverbal infants were asked to report on their infants' vocabulary on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 1994).

RESULTS

The preverbal infants looked longer to the switched relative to same pairings, suggesting word-action mapping, but not the postverbal infants. Mothers of the postverbal infants reported a noun bias on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories; infants learned more nouns than verbs in the natural environment. Further analyses revealed marginal word-action mapping in postverbal infants who learned fewer nouns and only comprehended verbs (post-verb comprehension), but not in those who learned more nouns and also produced verbs (post-verb production).

CONCLUSIONS

These findings on verb learning from inside and outside the laboratory suggest a developmental shift from domain-general to language-specific mechanisms. Long before they talk, infants learning a noun-dominant language learn synchronous word-action relations. As a postverbal language-specific noun bias develops, this learning temporarily diminishes.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5592637.

Early Verb-Action and Noun-Object Mapping Across Sensory Modalities: A Neuro-Developmental View

The authors provide an alternative to the traditional view that verbs are harder to learn than nouns by reviewing three lines of behavioral and neurophysiological evidence in word-mapping development across cultures. First, preverbal infants tune into word-action and word-object pairings using domain-general mechanisms. Second, while post-verbal infants from noun-friendly language environments experience verb-action mapping difficulty, infants from verb-friendly language environments do not. Third, children use language-specific conventions to learn all types of words, although still strongly influenced by their language environment. Additionally, the authors suggest neurophysiological research to advance these lines of evidence beyond traditional views of word learning.

Enhanced attention to speaking faces versus other event types emerges gradually across infancy

The development of attention to dynamic faces versus objects providing synchronous audiovisual versus silent visual stimulation was assessed in a large sample of infants. Maintaining attention to the faces and voices of people speaking is critical for perceptual, cognitive, social, and language development. However, no studies have systematically assessed when, if, or how attention to speaking faces emerges and changes across infancy. Two measures of attention maintenance, habituation time (HT) and look-away rate (LAR), were derived from cross-sectional data of 2- to 8-month-old infants (N = 801). Results indicated that attention to audiovisual faces and voices was maintained across age, whereas attention to each of the other event types (audiovisual objects, silent dynamic faces, silent dynamic objects) declined across age. This reveals a gradually emerging advantage in attention maintenance (longer HTs, lower LARs) for audiovisual speaking faces compared with the other 3 event types. At 2 months, infants showed no attentional advantage for faces (with greater attention to audiovisual than to visual events); at 3 months, they attended more to dynamic faces than objects (in the presence or absence of voices), and by 4 to 5 and 6 to 8 months, significantly greater attention emerged to temporally coordinated faces and voices of people speaking compared with all other event types. Our results indicate that selective attention to coordinated faces and voices over other event types emerges gradually across infancy, likely as a function of experience with multimodal, redundant stimulation from person and object events. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Multisensory Nature of Verbal Discourse in Parent-Toddler Interactions

Toddlers learn object names in sensory rich contexts. Many argue that this multisensory experience facilitates learning. Here, we examine how toddlers' multisensory experience is linked to another aspect of their experience associated with better learning: the temporally extended nature of verbal discourse. We observed parent-toddler dyads as they played with, and as parents talked about, a set of objects. Analyses revealed links between the multisensory and extended nature of speech, highlighting inter-connections and redundancies in the environment. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of early discourse, multisensory communication, and how the learning environment shapes language development.

The Dynamics of Infant Attention: Implications for Crossmodal Perception and Word-Mapping Research

The present review is a novel synthesis of research on infants' attention in two related domains-crossmodal perception and word mapping. The authors hypothesize that infant attention is malleable and shifts in real time. They review dynamic models of infant attention and provide empirical evidence for parallel trends in attention shifts from the two domains that support their hypothesis. When infants are exposed to competing auditory-visual stimuli in experiments, multiple factors cause attention to shift during infant-environment interactions. Additionally, attention shifts across nested timescales and individual variations in attention systematically explain development. They suggest future research to further elucidate the causal mechanisms that influence infants' attention dynamics, emphasizing the need to examine individual variations that index shifts over time.