Poster #115 - The effects of prematurity and SES on early phonological development

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

Two major developmental trajectories have been identified as markers of infants’ specialisation on their native language. First, there is an increase in infants’ ability to process native sounds and consequently, a preference emerges for the sequences that are either legal or have a high frequency of occurrence in their native language (e.g., Jusczyk, Cutler, & Redanz, 1993; Jusczyk, Luce, & Charles-Luce, 1994; Höhle, Bijeljac-Babic, Herold, Weissenborn, & Nazzi, T. 2009). Second, infants’ ability to process non-native sounds decreases over time, a process known as perceptual narrowing (e.g., Werker, & Tees, 1984; Mattock, & Burnham, 2006). These processes of learning have been assumed to be “universal” (Arnett, 2008). However, the vast majority of developmental studies have relied on “convenience samples”, consisting of infants born full term and from higher-SES families, which are, for the most part, unrepresentative of the larger population (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). There is thus no evidence as to how much the time course of learning is affected by maturational and environmental factors.

The present project addresses this issue. To do so, we investigated early phonological development in cases where: a) maturation is following an altered timetable: infants born preterm; and b) the environment is different: infants from lower-socio-economic status families. The linguistic abilities of both populations have been found to lag well behind their advantaged peers during the school years. Preterm children and children from low-SES families show poorer auditory discrimination and memory, reading difficulties, poor vocabulary, a specific delay in verbal processing and reasoning, less complex expressive language and lower receptive understanding than their matched controls (e.g., for data on preterm children see: Jansson-Verkasalo et al., 2004; Guarini et al., 2009; 2010; Sansavini et al., 2010; for data on low SES children see: Fernald, Marchman, & Weisleder, 2013; Farkas, & Beron, 2004; Halle, et al., 2009).

Three longitudinal studies explored infants’ phonetic, prosodic and phonotactic development, respectively, at 7.5, 9, 10.5 and 12 months of age. Preliminary analyses for 32 infants showed no significant differences between the phonetic or the phonotactic development of the preterm and the full-term infants. However, a time-lag between preterm and full-term developmental timing for prosody was found. Socioeconomic status didn’t have a significant difference on prosodic or phonetic development. Nevertheless, phonotactic development was affected by SES, infants from lower SES showed a preference for high-frequency sequences later than their more advantaged peers. Overall these results suggest that different constraints apply to the acquisition of different phonological subcomponents.

Authors

• Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez, Oxford Brookes University
  Presenting Author

• Sheula Barlow, Oxford University Hospitals, NHS
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sharon Baugh, Oxford University Hospitals, NHS
  Non-Presenting Author

• Frances O'Brien, Oxford University Hospitals, NHS
  Non-Presenting Author

• Margaret Harris, Oxford Brookes University
  Non-Presenting Author