The Diversity of Caregiver-child Coordination and its Contributions to Language Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

The language caregivers direct to children is a particularly important driver of their language development (Weisleder & Fernald, 2013). One hypothesis for why is that child-directed speech is adaptive, tuned optimally to children’s developmental level (Snow, 1972). This symposium explores the precision, breadth, and limits of caregiver communicative tuning. The first paper finds tuning at the lexical level where speech is sensitive to children’s vocabulary knowledge during a communication game. Caregivers used longer sentences and more descriptive speech when talking about animals they believed their children did not know. The second paper finds that prelinguistic infants’ multi-syllabic vocal productions elicit higher response rates from their caregivers. Longitudinal data show that over the course of infants’ development, caregivers become increasingly responsive to infants’ production of vocal sequences, a precursor of spoken language. The third paper compares caregiver tuning to children with ASD and those without. Despite slower processing speeds in children with ASD, the paper finds that caregivers adapt their child-directed speech similarly across groups during a referential communication game. The fourth paper finds that hearing caregivers of deaf infants can struggle to tune communicative interaction to their infants’ needs and early communication is often delayed as a consequence. However, early evidence shows that this risk can be circumvented through support videos which help caregivers respond to infants in ways likely to support their early language acquisition. Taken together, the findings from these papers illuminate the remarkable diversity of caregiver tuning and its role in shaping early language development.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chairs

• Ashley Leung, University of Chicago

• Steven L Elmlinger, Cornell University

Individual Presentations

• Parents Fine-tune Speech to Children’s Vocabulary Knowledge - Presenting Author: Ashley Leung, University of Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Alexandra Tunkel, George Washington University; Non-Presenting Author: Daniel Yurovsky, Carnegie Mellon University

• Caregivers Shift Their Response Behavior to Infants’ Vocal Sequences Over Development - Presenting Author: Steven L Elmlinger, Cornell University; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer Schwade, Cornell University; Non-Presenting Author: Michael H. Goldstein, Cornell University

• Parent Tuning to Children’s Language Processing Speed - Non-Presenting Author: Angela Xiaoxue He; Non-Presenting Author: Rhiannon J Luyster, Emerson College; Presenting Author: Sudha Arunachalam, New York University

• Deaf Infants at Risk of Restricted Access to Reciprocal Interaction: Effects on the Frequency of Both Gestural and Vocal Communication. - Presenting Author: Ciara Kelly, University of Manchester; Non-Presenting Author: Gary Morgan, City, University of London; Non-Presenting Author: Colin J. Bannard, The University of Liverpool; Non-Presenting Author: Danielle Elizabeth Matthews, University of Sheffield