2-177 - Overheard speech and language development: Cross-cultural, socioeconomic, and developmental perspectives

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Parental responsiveness, joint attention, and child-directed speech are understood to play an important role in children’s language development (e.g., Tamis-LeMonda et al., 1998; Tomasello & Farrar, 1986; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013). Children are also, however, surrounded by speech that is directed to others around them, though there are wide differences in the quantity and nature of overheard as opposed to child-directed speech exposure (e.g., Rogoff et al., 2003). The role that overheard speech plays in children’s vocabulary development is as yet unclear (e.g., Shneidman et al., 2013). Here, we explore the topic of overheard speech and language acquisition with new empirical evidence from three perspectives: culture, socioeconomic group, and developmental disability. Our first speaker will discuss experimental results on word learning in American and Yucatec-Mayan children, describing cross-cultural performance in child-directed versus overheard experimental conditions, as well as immediate learning versus later retention. Our second speaker will present language data analyzed from five American communities, discussing sociocultural differences in children’s exposure to overheard and child-directed speech as well as their social configuration. Our third speaker will present experimental results from children with autism spectrum disorder, whose social communication difficulties shape their abilities to acquire words by overhearing. Our discussant, a pioneer in experimental studies of children’s learning through overhearing, will bring together these diverse perspectives and pose new questions to shape future research.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Jessica Ghofrani, Boston University

Discussant

• Nameera Akhtar, University of California Santa Cruz

Individual Presentations

• Word learning in Yucatec Mayan and US Infants - Presenting Author: Nicole Burke, University of Chicago; Amanda Woodward, University of Chicago; Laura Ann Shneidman, Programa Interdisciplinario sobre Política y Prácticas Educativas, CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y DOCENCIA ECONOMICAS

• Locating overheard speech in the lives of children from diverse American communities - Presenting Author: Douglas E. Sperry, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College; Peggy J. Miller, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Linda L. Sperry, Indiana State University

• Overheard speech and word learning in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder - Presenting Author: Jessica Ghofrani, Boston University; Rhiannon Luyster, Emerson College; Sudha Arunachalam, Boston University