Poster #67 - Reaching for speech: Language input to infants during the transition to independent reaching

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

The first year of life is punctuated by the appearance of new motor skills that transform infants’ interactions with objects and people. These skills also shape caregivers’ social behaviors. For example, research has demonstrated that the transition from crawling to walking reorganizes caregiver language input: infants are more likely to hear language about their motor actions and everyday objects when they walk compared to when they crawl. The transition to walking is an eagerly awaited gross motor skill known to transform many aspects of infants’ exploratory activities. Does the acquisition of fine motor skills similarly shape caregiver communication? To address this question, we examined change in caregiver language input around the transition to independent reaching—an early-emerging, manual skill.

Thirty infant-caregiver dyads were videorecorded in the home during everyday activities for approximately 16 minutes (M = 16.59, SD = 2.85). We identified the age at which infants first began to reach (i.e., by producing goal-directed movements toward an object; M age = 4.0 months, SD = 0.59) and coded the monthly sessions before and after reach onset (i.e., pre-reaching, reach onset, one month later). For each video, coders identified all infant-directed utterances from a primary caregiver, and speech was categorized as containing object labels (e.g., ball, block) or manual verbs (e.g., stack, push). Finally, for all utterances containing an object label or manual verb, coders noted whether the referent object of each utterance was physically present.

Results indicated striking stability in the language input that caregivers provided to their infants around the transition to independent reaching. There was no significant change across the three sessions in the rate of caregiver utterances; caregivers produced approximately 6 utterances per minute at each session (p > .05; Figure 1A). Caregiver speech was similarly likely to contain both object labels (M = .08, SD = .06) and manual verbs (M = .07, SD = .06), and this also remained consistent over time (all ps > .05; Figure 1B). Finally, when caregivers did use labels and verbs in their speech to infants, they were almost exclusively likely to do so in the presence of the referent object (M object labels = 0.90, SD = .20; M manual verbs = 0.91, SD = .21). In other words, caregivers rarely produced action- and object-based language if an object was not physically present.

Taken together, our data suggest that the transition to independent reaching may not impact infants’ linguistic environments to the same extent as the acquisition of other motor skills, like walking. We discovered that caregivers were largely consistent both in how much they talked to their infants and how likely their speech was to contain language that described objects or directed manual actions. However, and as reported in the literature with older infants, caregivers were more likely to use referential speech about physically present objects. Collectively, these findings provide a rich description of the language input caregivers direct toward their infants during everyday activities in the earliest months of life.

Authors

• Morgan Kistler, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Joshua L Schneider, University of Pittsburgh

• Samantha Plate, University of Pittsburgh

• Emily Roemer Britsch, University of Pittsburgh

• Jana M Iverson, Boston University