Vocabulary, syntax, and narrative development in typically developing children and children with early unilateral brain injury: early parental talk about the "there-and-then" matters

Parental communicative input as a protective factor in Bangladeshi families living in poverty: A multi-dimensional perspective

Studies from high-income populations have shown that stimulating, supportive communicative input from parents promote children's cognitive and language development. However, fewer studies have identified specific features of input supporting the healthy development of children growing up in low- or middle-income countries. The current study proposes and tests a multi-dimensional framework for understanding whether and how caregiver communicative input mediates the associations between socio-economic conditions and early development. We also examine how caregiver conceptual scaffolding and autonomy support uniquely and synergistically explain variation in child outcomes. Participants were 71 Bangladeshi families with five-year-olds who were exposed to a range of biological and psychosocial hazards from birth. Caregiver-child interactions during snack sharing and semi-structured play were coded for caregiver conceptual scaffolding, autonomy support, and child engagement. Findings indicate that the two dimensions of input were correlated, suggesting that caregivers who provided richer conceptual scaffolds were simultaneously more supportive of children's autonomy. Notably, conceptual scaffolding and autonomy support each mediated associations between maternal education and child verbal intelligence quotient (IQ) scores. Further, caregivers who supported greater autonomy in their children had children who participated in conversations more actively, and these children in turn had higher performance IQ scores. When considered simultaneously, conceptual scaffolding was associated with verbal IQ over and above autonomy support, whereas autonomy support related to child engagement, controlling for conceptual scaffolding. These findings shed new light on how environmental factors may support early development, contributing to the design of family-centered, culturally authentic interventions. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/9v_8sIv7ako RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Studies from high-income countries have identified factors mitigating the impacts of socio-economic risks on development. Such research is scarce in low- and middle-income countries. The present study conceptualized and evaluated caregiver communicative input in Bangladeshi families along two interrelated yet distinct dimensions: conceptual scaffolding and autonomy support. Conceptual scaffolding and autonomy support individually mediated associations between maternal education and child verbal IQ, shedding light on protective factors in families living in poverty. Parents providing richer conceptual scaffolds were simultaneously more supportive of children's autonomy. However, the two dimensions each related to cognition and language through unique pathways.

Comparing parent-child interaction during wordless book reading, print book reading and imaginative play

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 also varied by condition. This study extends understanding of the role of activity context in shaping children's language learning environments.

Talk outside the box: Parents' decontextualized language during preschool years relates to child numeracy and literacy skills in middle childhood

Children's literacy and numeracy skills are fundamental for early academic performance and later academic success, mental health, and employment prospects in adulthood. Given that parents play a key role in promoting child development, identifying early parenting behaviors that predict literacy and numeracy skills is a research imperative. Emerging evidence suggests that parental use of decontextualized language (DL)-talk that requires cognitive abstraction and transcends the here and now-predicts children's literacy skills. However, its relation to numeracy remains underexplored. Accordingly, the current study examined how DL during interaction with children in infancy (T1) and preschool years (T2) relates to child literacy and numeracy in middle childhood (T3). Participants were 26 Irish mother-father-child triads (16 female children). At T1 and T2, participants engaged in 5-min interactions that were coded for DL. At T3, child literacy and numeracy were assessed using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition and teacher report of child scores on national standardized tests. Controlling for child age and contextualized utterances, child reading in middle childhood was negatively related to maternal and child DL in infancy but was positively related to DL during preschool years, suggesting that the benefits of DL may become apparent later in development. Mothers', fathers', and children's DL during preschool years was also positively linked with child numeracy in middle childhood. Thus, embedding DL in conversation with children may have positive domain-specific and cross-domain effects on children's literacy and numeracy performance. Findings provide incentive for future research to examine relations between DL and children's school performance across a wider range of developmental domains.

The linguistic complexity of adult and child contextualized and decontextualized talk

The association between decontextualized talk (DT; i.e., talk extending beyond immediate context) and child language outcomes is well-attested but not well-understood. This study tested the hypothesis that DT is more linguistically complex than contextualized talk (CT). Thirty-eight Norwegian children (Mage  = 5.5 years; 25 girls; 30 Norwegian-speaking monolinguals and eight multilinguals) and their teachers were videotaped during picture book reading, story card conversations and toy play (collected 2010-2011 and 2017). Results show that DT was more complex than CT among children and teachers. Both types of talk were more complex during book reading and story conversations than during play. The conversational context should be accounted for when theorizing about the role of DT in language development.

Decontextualized Utterances Contain More Typical and Stuttering-Like Disfluencies in Preschoolers Who Do and Do Not Stutter

PURPOSE

Stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) and typical disfluencies (TDs) are both more likely to occur as utterance length increases. However, longer and shorter utterances differ by more than the number of morphemes: They may also serve different communicative functions or describe different ideas. Decontextualized language, or language that describes events and concepts outside of the "here and now," is associated with longer utterances. Prior work has shown that language samples taken in decontextualized contexts contain more disfluencies, but averaging across an entire language sample creates a confound between utterance length and decontextualization as contributors to stuttering. We coded individual utterances from naturalistic play samples to test the hypothesis that decontextualized language leads to increased disfluencies above and beyond the effects of utterance length.

METHOD

We used archival transcripts of language samples from 15 preschool children who stutter (CWS) and 15 age- and sex-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS). Utterances were coded as either contextualized or decontextualized, and we used mixed-effects logistic regression to investigate the impact of utterance length and decontextualization on SLDs and TDs.

RESULTS

CWS were more likely to stutter when producing decontextualized utterances, even when controlling for utterance length. An interaction between decontextualization and utterance length indicated that the effect of decontextualization was greatest for shorter utterances. TDs increased in decontextualized utterances when controlling for utterance length for both CWS and CWNS. The effect of decontextualization on TDs did not differ statistically between the two groups.

CONCLUSIONS

The increased working memory demands associated with decontextualized language contribute to increased language planning effort. This leads to increased TD in CWS and CWNS. Under a multifactorial dynamic model of stuttering, the increased language demands may also contribute to increased stuttering in CWS due to instabilities in their speech motor systems.

Contributions of Abstract Extratextual Talk and Interactive Style to Preschoolers' Vocabulary Development

Caregiver abstract talk during shared reading predicts preschool-age children's vocabulary development. However, previous research has focused on level of abstraction with less consideration of the style of extratextual talk. Here, we investigated the relation between these two dimensions of extratextual talk, and their contributions to variance in children's vocabulary skills. Caregiver level of abstraction was associated with an interactive reading style. Controlling for socioeconomic status and child age, high interactivity predicted children's concurrent vocabulary skills whereas abstraction did not. Controlling for earlier vocabulary skills, neither dimension of the extratextual talk predicted later vocabulary. Theoretical and practical relevance are discussed.

Assessing the Quantity and Quality of Language Used by Mothers and Fathers of Children with Down Syndrome During Shared Book Reading

Young children with Down syndrome (DS) have language delays beginning early in life. Book reading with parents provides a context for capitalizing on language learning opportunities. This study evaluated the quantity and quality of language input among mothers and fathers of young children with DS during book reading interactions and investigated associations with child language. Findings revealed that mothers were more talkative and used more descriptive language, whereas fathers spent more time reading the book text. Moreover, maternal and paternal input were correlated with different measures of child language, suggesting that mothers and fathers may use divergent approaches to support language development.

Moderating or mediating effects of family characteristics on socioeconomic inequalities in child health in high-income countries - a scoping review

BACKGROUND

By explaining the development of health inequalities, eco-social theories highlight the importance of social environments that children are embedded in. The most important environment during early childhood is the family, as it profoundly influences children's health through various characteristics. These include family processes, family structure/size, and living conditions, and are closely linked to the socioeconomic position (SEP) of the family. Although it is known that the SEP contributes to health inequalities in early childhood, the effects of family characteristics on health inequalities remain unclear. The objective of this scoping review is to synthesise existing research on the mediating and moderating effects of family characteristics on socioeconomic health inequalities (HI) during early childhood in high-income countries.

METHODS

This review followed the methodology of "Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews". To identify German and English scientific peer-reviewed literature published from January 1^st, 2000, to December 19^th, 2019, the following search term blocks were linked with the logical operator "AND": (1) family structure/size, processes, living conditions, (2) inequalities, disparities, diversities, (3) income, education, occupation, (4) health and (5) young children. The search covered the electronic databases PubMed, PsycINFO, and Scopus.

RESULTS

The search yielded 7,089 records. After title/abstract and full-text screening, only ten peer-reviewed articles were included in the synthesis, which analysed the effects of family characteristics on HI in early childhood. Family processes (i.e., rules /descriptive norms, stress, parental screen time, parent-child conflicts) are identified to have mediating or moderating effects. While families' living conditions (i.e., TVs in children's bedrooms) are suggested as mediating factors, family structure/size (i.e., single parenthood, number of children in the household) appear to moderate health inequalities.

CONCLUSION

Family characteristics contribute to health inequalities in early childhood. The results provide overall support of models of family stress and family investment. However, knowledge gaps remain regarding the role of family health literacy, regarding a wide range of children's health outcomes (e.g., oral health, inflammation parameters, weight, and height), and the development of health inequalities over the life course starting at birth.

Personal narrative as a 'breeding ground' for higher-order thinking talk in early parent-child interactions

Personal narrative is decontextualized talk where individuals recount stories of personal experiences about past or future events. As an everyday discursive speech type, narrative potentially invites parents and children to explicitly link together, generalize from, and make inferences about representations-i.e., to engage in higher-order thinking talk (HOTT). Here we ask whether narratives in early parent-child interactions include proportionally more HOTT than other forms of everyday home language. Sixty-four children (31 girls; 36 White, 14 Black, 8 Hispanic, 6 mixed/other race) and their primary caregiver(s) (M _income = $61,000) were recorded in 90-minute spontaneous home interactions every 4 months from 14-58 months. Speech was transcribed and coded for narrative and HOTT. We found that parents at all visits and children after 38 months used more HOTT in narrative than non-narrative, and more HOTT than expected by chance. At 38- and 50-months, we examined HOTT in a related but distinct form of decontextualized talk-pretend, or talk during imaginary episodes of interaction-as a control to test whether other forms of decontextualized talk also relate to HOTT. While pretend contained more HOTT than other (non-narrative/non-pretend) talk, it generally contained less HOTT than narrative. Additionally, unlike HOTT during narrative, the amount of HOTT during pretend did not exceed the amount expected by chance, suggesting narrative serves as a particularly rich 'breeding ground' for HOTT in parent-child interactions. These findings provide insight into the nature of narrative discourse, and suggest narrative potentially may be used as a lever to increase children's higher-order thinking.

Parent Language Input Prior to School Forecasts Change in Children's Language-Related Cortical Structures During Mid-Adolescence

Children differ widely in their early language development, and this variability has important implications for later life outcomes. Parent language input is a strong experiential factor predicting the variability in children's early language skills. However, little is known about the brain or cognitive mechanisms that underlie the relationship. In addressing this gap, we used longitudinal data spanning 15 years to examine the role of early parental language input that children receive during preschool years in the development of brain structures that support language processing during school years. Using naturalistic parent-child interactions, we measured parental language input (amount and complexity) to children between the ages of 18 and 42 months (n = 23). We then assessed longitudinal changes in children's cortical thickness measured at five time points between 9 and 16 years of age. We focused on specific regions of interest (ROIs) that have been shown to play a role in language processing. Our results support the view that, even after accounting for important covariates such as parental intelligence quotient (IQ) and education, the amount and complexity of language input to a young child prior to school forecasts the rate of change in cortical thickness during the 7-year period from 5½ to 12½ years later. Examining the proximal correlates of change in brain and cognitive differences has the potential to inform targets for effective prevention and intervention strategies.

Maternal Use of Decontextualized and Contextualized Talk: An In-Depth Investigation of Early Parent-Child Interactions in Down Syndrome

Purpose The goal of this study was to characterize and quantify maternal use of decontextualized and contextualized input during mother-child interactions including young children with Down syndrome (DS). Method Participants included 22 mother-child dyads with DS (M age = 42.8 months) and 22 mother-child dyads with typical development (M age = 44.0 months). Parent-child language samples were collected during free-play, book reading, and snack time, and coded for maternal decontextualized (i.e., pretend, explanatory, and narrative talk) and contextualized input (i.e., descriptions, conversation, praise, questions, and directives). Results Mothers of children with DS used a larger proportion of pretend talk compared to other types of decontextualized input and also used a larger proportion of questions, conversation, and descriptions compared to other types of contextualized language. Mothers of children with DS generally used a smaller proportion of decontextualized input compared to mothers of children with typical development, with the exception of pretend talk. Maternal decontextualized input was not related to children's age or language ability in DS. Conclusions Findings shed new light on the early language environments of children with DS, providing important insight into the ways that mothers of children with DS are incorporating decontextualized and contextualized talk into early mother-child conversations. Additional implications and future directions are discussed.

Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent-Child Speech and Gesture

Spatial skills predict important life outcomes, such as mathematical achievement or entrance into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Children significantly vary in their spatial performance even before they enter formal schooling. One correlate of children's spatial performance is the spatial language they produce and hear from others, such as their parents. Because the emphasis has been on spatial language, less is known about the role of hand gestures in children's spatial development. Some children are more likely to fall behind in their spatial skills than others. Children born premature (gestational age <37 weeks) constitute such a risk group. Here, we compared performance of term and preterm-born children on two non-verbal spatial tasks-mental transformation and block design. We also examined relations of children's performance on these tasks to parental spatial language and gesture input and their own production of spatial language and gesture during an independent puzzle play interaction. We found that while term and preterm-born children (n = 40) as a group did not differ in the mental transformation or block design performance, children varied widely in their performance within each group. The variability in mental transformation scores was predicted by both a subset of spatial words (what aspects of spatial information) and all spatial gestures children produced. Children's spatial language and gesture were in turn related to their parents' spatial language and gesture. Parental spatial language and gesture had an indirect relation on children's mental transformation, but not block design, scores via children's spatial language, and gesture use. Overall, results highlight the unique contributions of speech and gesture in communicating spatial information and predicting children's spatial performance.

An intervention to increase conversational turns between parents and young children

Behavioral and neural evidence indicates that young children who engage in more conversations with their parents have better later language skills such as vocabulary and academic language abilities. Previous studies find that the extent to which parents engage in conversational turn-taking with children varies considerably. How, then, can we promote extended conversations between parents and their children? Instead of asking parents to engage in longer turn-taking episodes, we provided parents with information on conversational content that we hypothesized would lead to increased episodes of longer, more sustained conversational turn-taking. Specifically, we found that boosting the frequency of parent-child talk about abstract, non-present concepts - decontextualized language - led to an increase in dyadic conversational turn-taking during home mealtimes several weeks later.

A Comparative Study of the Communication Profile of Typically Developing Children and Children with Receptive-Expressive Language Disorders: A Parental Perceptive

Background:

Parental concerns pertaining to communication abilities are essential as it does aid in the identification of the children at risk of physical and mental health problems.

Objectives:

The current study followed a cross sectional study design. The study focussed on developing a questionnaire targeting the parental concerns in Typically developing (TD) children and children with Receptive-Expressive Language Disorders (CWRELD) between 3.7 and 6.6 years of age; to administer the developed questionnaire on parents of TD children and CWRELD; and to analyse and compare the concerns faced by parents of TD children and CWRELD across 3.7 and 6.6 years of age.

Methods:

Fifty-one parents of TD children and 51 parents of CWRELD participated in the study. The study was carried out in three phases- Phase I included the development and validation of questionnaire; Phase II included data collection using the developed questionnaire; and Phase III included performing statistical analysis. Descriptive statistics was done to determine the mean and standard deviation (SD) for both the TD and CWRELD groups.

Results:

The results revealed that the concerns exhibited by parents of CWRELD were significantly higher than that of parents of TD children. Chi square results indicated statistically significant findings across all the domains between TD children and CWRELD (p<0.05).

Conclusion:

The developed questionnaire can be used in clinical settings to help track parental concerns which may aid in the early identification of children at risk of various communication disorders. Additionally, this questionnaire may be considered for monitoring parental concerns throughout the course of the intervention program.

Signatures of brain plasticity supporting language recovery after perinatal arterial ischemic stroke

Brain imaging methods such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) have already been used to decipher the functional and structural brain changes occurring during normal language development. However, little is known about the differentiation of the language network after an early lesion. While in adults, stroke over the left hemisphere generally induces post-stroke aphasia, it is not always the case when a stroke occurs in the perinatal period, thus revealing a remarkable plastic power of the language network during early development. In particular, the role of perilesional tissues, as opposed to undamaged brain areas in the functional recovery of language functions after an early insult, remains unclear. In this review article, we provide an overview of the extant literature using functional and structural neuroimaging data revealing the signatures of brain plasticity underlying near-normal language development.

Effects of Embedding Decontextualized Language Through Book-Sharing Delivered by Mothers and Fathers in Coparenting Environments

Purpose This experiment investigated the effects of a book-sharing intervention implemented in coparenting homes on the conversations of preschoolers with their parents. Method A multiple baseline design across behaviors was used to evaluate the effects of embedding decontextualized language utterances during book-sharing delivered by four families. A visual analysis, a two-level mixed-effects model, and a social validity evaluation were used to examine the varying effects of the program on mothers and fathers' storybook conversations. Results Embedding decontextualized language prompts in books not only increased parental decontextualized language utterances, but most parents were able to maintain use of strategies without prompts in the books. The intervention effects were consistently higher for parents than for their children. Social validity results demonstrated parental satisfaction with program delivery and content. Conclusion This study adds to the limited literature on father-child and mother-child decontextualized conversations during book-sharing and illustrates a feasible and adaptable way of promoting language experiences in the home that yield engaging decontextualized conversations in meaningful book-reading contexts. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13210799.

Narrative Potential of Picture-Book Apps: A Media- and Interaction-Oriented Study

Digital literature is playing an increasingly important role in children's everyday lives and opening up new paths for family literacy and early childhood education. However, despite positive effects of electronic books and picture-book apps on vocabulary learning, early writing, or phonological awareness, research findings on early narrative skills are ambiguous. Particularly, there still is a research gap regarding how app materiality affects children's story understanding. Thus, based on the ViSAR model for picture-book app analysis and data stemming from 12 digital reading dyads containing German monolingual 2- to 3-year-olds and their caregivers this study assessed the narrative potential of a commercial picture-book app and how this is used in interaction. Results of the media analysis showed that the app provides a high number of narrative animations. These animations could be used interactively to engage the child in the story. However, results of the interaction analysis showed that adult readers do not exploit this potential due to their strong concentration on operative prompts and instructions. Furthermore, an explorative analysis of the relation between adults' utterances and children's story comprehension provided preliminary indicators regarding how the length of reading duration and the number of utterances might relate to children's understanding of the story. Findings and methodological limitations of the study are discussed and combined didactically with practical recommendations on how to use narrative animations in interaction effectively.

Speaking the Same Language? A Preliminary Investigation, Comparing the Language and Communication Skills of Females and Males with High-Functioning Autism

Understanding the nature of language and communication disorders in High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) populations may provide insight into why females are more likely than males to go undiagnosed. Language and communication skills were compared between 13 females and 13 males (aged 8.11–11.06) with HFASD. Gender-normative data was also ascertained from 26 typically developing children (TD) matched for age and gender. All children had typical range PIQ, slight variation here was controlled for in analysis. Results show females outperforming males in pragmatic and semantic tasks and in certain language-of-emotion tasks. TDs outperformed HFASDs in above-sentence level tasks, but not in basic vocabulary or sentence level tasks. This study highlights specific strengths/weaknesses in language and communication for female HFASD, which could aid more accurate identification of the female autistic phenotype. It indicates the need for larger follow up studies in this area.

Parent-Child Reminiscing about Past Pain as a Preparatory Technique in the Context of Children's Pain: A Narrative Review and Call for Future Research

Pain permeates childhood and remains inadequately and/or inconsistently managed. Existing research and clinical practice guidelines have largely focused on factors influencing the immediate experience of pain. The need for and benefits of preparing children for future pain (e.g., painful procedures) has been well established. Despite being a robust predictor of future pain and distress, memories of past painful experiences remain overlooked in pediatric pain management. Just as autobiographical memories prepare us for the future, children’s memories for past pain can be harnessed to prepare children for future painful experiences. Children’s pain memories are malleable and can be reframed to be less distressing, thus reducing anticipatory distress and promoting self-efficacy. Parents are powerful agents of change in the context of pediatric pain and valuable historians of children’s past painful experiences. They can alter children’s pain memories to be less distressing simply by talking, or reminiscing, about past pain. This narrative review summarizes existing research on parent–child reminiscing in the context of acute and chronic pediatric pain and argues for incorporation of parent–child reminiscing elements into preparatory interventions for painful procedures.

The origins of higher-order thinking lie in children's spontaneous talk across the pre-school years

Higher-order thinking is relational reasoning in which multiple representations are linked together, through inferences, comparisons, abstractions, and hierarchies. We examine the development of higher-order thinking in 64 preschool-aged children, observed from 14 to 58 months in naturalistic situations at home. We used children's spontaneous talk about and with relations (i.e., higher-order thinking talk, or HOTT) as a window onto their higher-order thinking skills. We find that surface HOTT, in which relations between representations are more immediate and easily perceptible, appears before-and is far more frequent than-structure HOTT, in which relations between representations are more abstract and less easy to perceive. Child-specific factors (including early vocabulary and gesture use, first-born status, and family income) predict differences in children's onset (i.e., age of acquisition) of HOTT and its trajectory of use across development. Although HOTT utterances tend to be longer and more syntactically complex than non-HOTT utterances, HOTT frequently appears in non-complex utterances, and a substantial proportion of children achieve complex utterance onset prior to the onset of HOTT. This finding suggests that complex language is neither necessary nor sufficient for HOTT to occur; other factors above and beyond complex linguistic skills are involved in the onset and use of higher-order thinking. Finally, we found that the trajectory of HOTT, particularly structure HOTT-but not complex utterances-during the preschool period predicts standardized outcome measures of inference and analogy skills in grade school, which underscores the crucial role that this kind of early talk plays for later outcomes.

Story choice matters for caregiver extra-textual talk during shared reading with preschoolers

This study aimed to examine the influence of the complexity of the story-book on caregiver extra-textual talk (i.e., interactions beyond text reading) during shared reading with preschool-age children. Fifty-three mother-child dyads (3;00-4;11) were video-recorded sharing two ostensibly similar picture-books: a simple story (containing no false belief) and a complex story (containing a false belief central to the plot, which provided content that was more challenging for preschoolers to understand). Book-reading interactions were transcribed and coded. Results showed that the complex stories facilitated more extra-textual talk from mothers, and a higher quality of extra-textual talk (as indexed by linguistic richness and level of abstraction). Although the type of story did not affect the number of questions mothers posed, more elaborative follow-ups on children's responses were provided by mothers when sharing complex stories. Complex stories may facilitate more and linguistically richer caregiver extra-textual talk, having implications for preschoolers' developing language abilities.

Decontextualized talk in caregivers' input to 12-month-old children during structured interaction

Decontextualized talk is assumed to be used only rarely when children are younger than 30 months. Motivated by Bühler's (1934/1999) linguistic theory that describes different dimensions of (de-)contextualization, we provide evidence that this kind of input can already be found in caregivers' talking to their 12-month-old children. Such early input is characterized by being decontextualized on some dimensions while being grounded in the immediate context on others. In this way, parents may scaffold understanding of talk about the there-and-then. We also examined whether caregivers adapt decontextualized verbal input to individual trajectories in language development. We observed 59 parent-child interactions within a decorated room when children were 12 months old, and assessed the children's linguistic development at 12 and 24 months of age. However, we did not find differences in the input directed toward children with different trajectories in language development.

Language activities in a minority-majority language context: book-reading at home is more important for Frisian than for Dutch

Previous research has shown that in a minority-majority language context, the quantity of language input at home is more important for the development of the minority language than for the development of the majority language. In the current study, we examined whether the same holds true for the frequency of specific language activities at home. In a group of five- and six-year-old Frisian-Dutch bilingual children (n = 120), we investigated to what extent vocabulary and morphology knowledge were predicted by reading activities, watching TV, and story-telling activities in both languages. The results showed that reading in Frisian predicted both Frisian vocabulary and morphology, while reading in Dutch only predicted Dutch vocabulary. This shows that reading at home is most important for the development of the minority language. This especially holds true for the acquisition of Frisian morphology, a domain that is known to be vulnerable in language acquisition.

Language development and brain reorganization in a child born without the left hemisphere

We present a case of a 14-year-old girl born without the left hemisphere due to prenatal left internal carotid occlusion. We combined longitudinal language and cognitive assessments with functional and structural neuroimaging data to situate the case within age-matched, typically developing children. Despite having had a delay in getting language off the ground during the preschool years, our case performed within the normal range on a variety of standardized language tests, and exceptionally well on phonology and word reading, during the elementary and middle school years. Moreover, her spatial, number, and reasoning skills also fell in the average to above-average range based on assessments during these time periods. Functional MRI data revealed activation in right fronto-temporal areas when listening to short stories, resembling the bilateral activation patterns in age-matched typically developing children. Diffusion MRI data showed significantly larger dorsal white matter association tracts (the direct and anterior segments of the arcuate fasciculus) connecting areas active during language processing in her remaining right hemisphere, compared to either hemisphere in control children. We hypothesize that these changes in functional and structural brain organization are the result of compensatory brain plasticity, manifesting in unusually large right dorsal tracts, and exceptional performance in phonology, speech repetition, and decoding. More specifically, we posit that our case's large white matter connections might have played a compensatory role by providing fast and reliable transfer of information between cortical areas for language in the right hemisphere.

Analyzing input quality along three dimensions: interactive, linguistic, and conceptual

This paper provides an overview of the features of caregiver input that facilitate language learning across early childhood. We discuss three dimensions of input quality: interactive, linguistic, and conceptual. All three types of input features have been shown to predict children's language learning, though perhaps through somewhat different mechanisms. We argue that input best designed to promote language learning is interactionally supportive, linguistically adapted, and conceptually challenging for the child's age/level. Furthermore, input features interact across dimensions to promote learning. Some but not all qualities of input vary based on parent socioeconomic status, language, or culture, and contexts such as book-reading or pretend play generate uniquely facilitative input features. The review confirms that we know a great deal about the role of input quality in promoting children's development, but that there is much more to learn. Future research should examine input features across the boundaries of the dimensions distinguished here.

Right Structural and Functional Reorganization in Four-Year-Old Children with Perinatal Arterial Ischemic Stroke Predict Language Production

Brain imaging methods have contributed to shed light on the mechanisms of recovery after early brain insult. The assumption that the unaffected right hemisphere can take over language functions after left perinatal stroke is still under debate. Here, we report how patterns of brain structural and functional reorganization were associated with language outcomes in a group of four-year-old children with left perinatal arterial ischemic stroke (PAIS). Specifically, we gathered specific fine-grained developmental measures of receptive and productive aspects of language as well as standardized measures of cognitive development. We also collected structural neuroimaging data as well as functional activations during a passive listening story-telling fMRI task and a resting state session (rs-fMRI). Children with a left perinatal stroke showed larger lateralization indices of both structural and functional connectivity of the dorsal language pathway towards the right hemisphere that, in turn, were associated with better language outcomes. Importantly, the pattern of structural asymmetry was significantly more right-lateralized in children with a left perinatal brain insult than in a group of matched healthy controls. These results strongly suggest that early lesions of the left dorsal pathway and the associated perisylvian regions can induce the interhemispheric transfer of language functions to right homolog regions. This study provides combined evidence of structural and functional brain reorganization of language networks after early stroke with strong implications for neurobiological models of language development.

New insights from children with early focal brain injury: Lessons to be learned from examining STEM-related skills

The study of cognitive development in children with early brain injury reveals crucial information about the developing brain and its plasticity. However, information on long-term outcomes of these children, especially in domains relevant to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) remains limited. In the current review, our goal is to address the existing research on cognitive development of children with pre- or perinatal focal brain lesion (PL) as it relates to children's STEM-related skills and suggest future work that could shed further light on the developmental trajectories of children with PL. We argue that examining STEM-related development in children with PL will have broader implications for our understanding of the nature of the plasticity children with PL exhibit as well as address theoretical questions in the field regarding the foundation skills for STEM, including visuospatial and mathematical skills.

Hearing me hearing you: Reciprocal effects between child and parent language in autism and typical development

Language development in typically developing children (TD) has traditionally been investigated in relation to environmental factors, while language in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has primarily been related to child-based factors. We employ a longitudinal corpus of 32 preschoolers with ASD and 35 linguistically matched TD peers recorded over 6 visits (ranging between 2 and 5 years of age) to investigate the relative importance of child-based and environmental factors in language development for both populations. We also investigate the reciprocal interaction between children's response to parents' input, and parents' response to children's production. We report six major findings. (1) Children's production of word types, tokens, and MLU increased across visits, and were predicted by their Expressive Language (EL) (positively) and diagnosis (negatively) from Visit 1. (2) Parents' production also increased across visits, and was predicted by their child's nonverbal cognition (positively) and diagnosis (negatively) from Visit 1. (3) At all visits and across groups, children and parents matched each other in lexical and syntactic production; (4) Parents who produced longer MLUs during a given visit had children who produced more word types and tokens, and had longer MLUs, at the subsequent visit. (5) When both child EL at Visit 1 and parent MLU were included in the model, both contributed significantly to future child language; however, EL accounted for a greater proportion of the variance. (6) Finally, children's speech significantly predicted parent speech at the next visit. Taken together, these results draw more attention to the importance of child-based factors in the early language development of TD children, and to the importance of parental language factors in the early language development of children with ASD.

Desempenho de falantes do português brasileiro no “Test of Narrative Language (TNL)”

RESUMO Objetivo Investigar o desempenho de falantes do português brasileiro no Test of Narrative Language e correlacionar o desempenho nas tarefas de produção e compreensão da narrativa. Método Participaram 140 indivíduos, entre 5 e 11 anos e 11 meses de idade com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem, divididos de acordo com a faixa etária. Resultados Diferença significativa foi encontrada entre o grupo de 5 anos e todos os demais grupos etários, bem como para o grupo de 6 anos quando comparado ao grupo de 8, 9, 10 e 11 anos. O grupo de 7 anos não diferiu estatisticamente dos grupos de 6 e 8 anos. Metade do grupo de 7 anos cursava o primeiro ano e a outra metade, o segundo ano, o que pode ter contribuído para a não diferenciação do grupo com as faixas etárias fronteiriças. Não foi encontrada diferença estatisticamente significante entre os grupos a partir dos 8 anos. Observou-se correlação positiva entre o desempenho de compreensão e produção nos grupos etários de 5, 6 e 7 anos, o que não ocorreu para os demais grupos. Conclusão O teste diferenciou as faixas etárias de 5, 6 e 7 anos, o que não ocorreu nas faixas etárias a partir dos 8 anos. Também, a partir dos 8 anos, não foi encontrada correlação entre a produção e a compreensão narrativa, sinalizando o domínio de ambas as habilidades a partir desta faixa etária.

Children's Early Decontextualized Talk Predicts Academic Language Proficiency in Midadolescence

This study examines whether children's decontextualized talk-talk about nonpresent events, explanations, or pretend-at 30 months predicts seventh-grade academic language proficiency (age 12). Academic language (AL) refers to the language of school texts. AL proficiency has been identified as an important predictor of adolescent text comprehension. Yet research on precursors to AL proficiency is scarce. Child decontextualized talk is known to be a predictor of early discourse development, but its relation to later language outcomes remains unclear. Forty-two children and their caregivers participated in this study. The proportion of child talk that was decontextualized emerged as a significant predictor of seventh-grade AL proficiency, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, parent decontextualized talk, child total words, child vocabulary, and child syntactic comprehension.

The Role of Language Skill in Child Psychopathology: Implications for Intervention in the Early Years

In this narrative review, we suggest that children's language skill should be targeted in clinical interventions for children with emotional and behavioral difficulties in the preschool years. We propose that language skill predicts childhood emotional and behavioral problems and this relationship may be mediated by children's self-regulation and emotion understanding skills. In the first sections, we review recent high-quality longitudinal studies which together demonstrate that that children's early language skill predicts: (1) emotional and behavioral problems, and this relationship is stronger than the reverse pattern; (2) self-regulation skill; this pattern may be stronger than the reverse pattern but moderated by child age. Findings also suggest that self-regulation skill mediates the relation between early language skill and children's emotional and behavioral problems. There is insufficient evidence regarding the mediating role of emotion understanding. In subsequent sections, we review evidence demonstrating that: (1) particular kinds of developmentally targeted parent-child conversations play a vital role in the development of language skill, and (2) some current clinical interventions, directly or indirectly, have a beneficial impact on children's vocabulary and narrative skills, but most approaches are ad hoc. Targeting language via parent-child conversation has the potential to improve the outcomes of current clinical interventions in the preschool years.

Resilience in mathematics after early brain injury: The roles of parental input and early plasticity

Children with early focal unilateral brain injury show remarkable plasticity in language development. However, little is known about how early brain injury influences mathematical learning. Here, we examine early number understanding, comparing cardinal number knowledge of typically developing children (TD) and children with pre- and perinatal lesions (BI) between 42 and 50 months of age. We also examine how this knowledge relates to the number words children hear from their primary caregivers early in life. We find that children with BI, are, on average, slightly behind TD children in both cardinal number knowledge and later mathematical performance, and show slightly slower learning rates than TD children in cardinal number knowledge during the preschool years. We also find that parents’ “number talk” to their toddlers predicts later mathematical ability for both TD children and children with BI. These findings suggest a relatively optimistic story in which neural plasticity is at play in children’s mathematical development following early brain injury. Further, the effects of early number input suggest that intervening to enrich the number talk that children with BI hear during the preschool years could narrow the math achievement gap.

[Impressive (sensory) alalia]

Receptive language disorder [F80.2 ICD=10] is the most severe children's language disorder: the child with normal intellect and hearing does not start to comprehend the speech of others and as a consequence - to speak. The etiology is unknown, the prognosis unfavorable. The profound study of the syndrome is necessary for the clarification of diagnostic criteria and creation of the system of adequate medical and pedagogical help, and also in the theoretical aspect. We performed an analysis of the symptomatology and progress of the syndrome (17 children of 2-10 years of age) based on data of onto-, neuro- and psycholinguistics. The analysis reveals two variants of the course of the syndrome; it clarifies behavioral diagnostic criteria and substantiates principal directions of the pedagogical work aimed at habilitation. Also, we discuss possible nature of the brain damage, which in our opinion can help planning medical research.

Low-income fathers' speech to toddlers during book reading versus toy play

Fathers' child-directed speech across two contexts was examined. Father-child dyads from sixty-nine low-income families were videotaped interacting during book reading and toy play when children were 2;0. Fathers used more diverse vocabulary and asked more questions during book reading while their mean length of utterance was longer during toy play. Variation in these specific characteristics of fathers' speech that differed across contexts was also positively associated with child vocabulary skill measured on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Results are discussed in terms of how different contexts elicit specific qualities of child-directed speech that may promote language use and development.

The Benefits of Reminiscing With Young Children

Parents talk about the past with their young children from the time their children can talk. There is robust evidence that when parents discuss the past in a detailed, emotional, and collaborative way (elaborative reminiscing), their children have stronger autobiographical memory skills. We review recent research showing that elaborative reminiscing also has significant benefits for children’s language and socioemotional skills. Importantly, these findings show that elaborative reminiscing is effective with children at risk of compromised development in the context of poverty, maltreatment, or psychopathology. Elaborative reminiscing appears to foster development by providing children with practice using challenging language, encouraging them to put their experiences into words, and optimizing memory for the information gained during conversations. Although further research in diverse cultures is required, reminiscing is a promising tool—available to all families—for promoting children’s cognitive and socioemotional development.

Language development in rural and urban Russian-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder

Using a newly developed Assessment of the Development of Russian Language (ORRIA), we investigated differences in language development between rural vs. urban Russian-speaking children (n = 100 with a mean age of 6.75) subdivided into groups with and without developmental language disorders. Using classical test theory and item response theory approaches, we found that while ORRIA displayed overall satisfactory psychometric properties, several of its items showed differential item functioning favoring rural children, and several others favoring urban children. After the removal of these items, rural children significantly underperformed on ORRIA compared to urban children. The urbanization factor did not significantly interact with language group. We discuss the latter finding in the context of the multiple additive risk factors for language development and emphasize the need for future studies of the mechanisms that underlie these influences and the implications of these findings for our understanding of the etiological architecture of children's language development.

Reading Development in Typically Developing Children and Children With Prenatal or Perinatal Brain Lesions: Differential School Year and Summer Growth

Summer slide, uneven growth of academic skills over the calendar year, captures the fact that the learning gains children make over the school year do not continue at the same pace over the summer, when children are typically not in school. We compared growth of reading skills during the school year and over the summer months in children with pre-or perinatal brain lesion (PL) and typically-developing (TD) children from varying socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds as a new way to probe the role of structured environmental support in functional plasticity for reading skills in children with PL. Results showed that children with PL performed lower than TD children on both reading decoding and reading comprehension. Group differences were primarily driven by children with larger lesions and children with right hemisphere lesions (RH). For reading comprehension, children with RH showed greater growth during the school year but more slide during the summer months than both TD children and children with left hemisphere lesions, implicating a particularly strong role of structured input in supporting reading comprehension in this group. TD children from lower SES backgrounds fell behind their TD peers from higher SES backgrounds on decoding and reading comprehension, but did not show differential patterns of school year and summer growth. Overall, results highlight the importance of considering the role of a host of factors interacting at multiple levels of analyses, including biological and environmental, in influencing developmental trajectories of typically and atypically-developing children.

Jump-Starting Early Childhood Education at Home

By the time children begin formal schooling, their experiences at home have already contributed to large variations in their math and language development, and once school begins, academic achievement continues to depend strongly on influences outside of school. It is thus essential that educational reform strategies involve primary caregivers. Specifically, programs and policies should promote and support aspects of caregiver–child interaction that have been empirically demonstrated to boost early learning and should seek to impede “motivational sinkholes” that threaten to undermine caregivers’ desires to engage their children effectively. This article draws on cognitive and behavioral science to detail simple, low-cost, and effective tools caregivers can employ to prepare their children for educational success and then describes conditions that can protect and facilitate caregivers’ motivation to use those tools. Policy recommendations throughout focus on using existing infrastructure to more deeply engage caregivers in effective early childhood education at home.