Poster #8 - Parents’ Perception of Infant Word Knowledge Influences Their Language Input to Infants

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Infants begin to comprehend and produce words through interactions with experienced speakers. It is no surprise that both the quantity and quality of the language input parents provide are predictive of children’s later language ability and school achievement (e.g., Cartmill et al., 2013; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hurtado, Marchman, & Fernald, 2008). We also know that speech input to preverbal infants is influenced by the age and linguistic development of the infant (Soderstrom, 2007). It is largely unknown, however, whether parents tailor their language to support infants’ developing word knowledge by talking about words their infant already produces in a different way than they talk about novel words (cf. Cleave & Bird, 2006).

The present study investigated the effect of word familiarity on the quantity and quality of parents’ talk about objects to their 16-25-month-olds during a 10-minute naturalistic play session with 23 objects (i.e., a truck, elephant, flower, etc.). Each object was classified as “Familiar” or “Unfamiliar” individually for each child based on parent report of whether their child produced (“Familiar”) or did not produce (“Unfamiliar”) the noun label for each object (Cleave & Bird, 2006). On average, 10 objects were classified as Familiar and 13 as Unfamiliar for each child. Parents’ speech was transcribed and coded for “naming utterances” – phrases that included an object label. Infants wore head-mounted eye-trackers; recordings were coded frame-by-frame for infant looks to and/or touches of each object. We analyzed data from 21 dyads for whether parents’ perception of an object label’s familiarity to their child influenced the quantity and quality of speech to their child about that object.

Results. Children looked to and touched Familiar and Unfamiliar objects equally frequently and for similar durations (Figure 1A-D). Nevertheless, parents named Familiar objects more frequently and with longer utterance durations compared to Unfamiliar objects (Figure 1E-F).

Parents can create high quality naming moments from the infant’s perspective by naming the object that their child has been looking at and/or touching, both of which have been shown to promote object name learning (Pereira, Smith, Yu, 2014; Yu & Smith, 2012). Thus, naming quality was compared by computing the proportion of naming utterances in which the child had been (a) looking to or (b) touching the named object for each frame of the 5 seconds prior to the naming utterance onset. Infants were more likely to be looking to and touching a named object just prior to when it was named compared to several seconds before naming (Figure 2), suggesting that parents named objects selectively based on what their child was looking at and touching in the moment. Moreover, parents provided these higher quality naming moments more often for Unfamiliar objects than for Familiar objects (Figure 2).

Discussion. These findings suggest that, in this naturalistic play context, parents tailored both the quantity and quality of their speech based on perceived word familiarity. This tailored speech may support both expanded learning about familiar nouns through increased language quantity, and new learning about unfamiliar nouns through higher-quality naming moments.

Authors

• Lauren K Slone, Indiana University
  Presenting Author

• Linda B Smith, Indiana University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chen Yu, Indiana University
  Non-Presenting Author