1-129 - Theoretically Informed Language Interventions: Identifying Features of Teacher Input that Enhance Children’s Language Growth

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Many preschool programs target enrollment to children from low-income homes, many of whom may exhibit normative lags in language development. In such settings, accelerating children’s language skills is a key priority, contributing to extensive efforts by researchers towards developing and testing programs that will accelerate children’s language development. To date, many of these programs have fared poorly in experimental studies, having little or no impact on children’s language development, even when they have positive effects on other areas of development (e.g., literacy, social skills). Why is this the case? One possibility is that these practices and programs are not designed to affect those precise features of adult linguistic input that affect children’s language development, such as complex syntactic structures (e.g., diverse lexical noun phrase subjects); another possibility is that teachers show low uptake on the types of linguistic input designed to affect children’s language growth. In this symposium, we integrate findings from various research designs and theoretical frameworks to (1) identify features of adult input that affect preschool children’s language development within classroom settings, and 2) explore the extent to which implementation of practices and programs affects these features of adult linguistic input. We integrate research findings from lab-based studies, efficacy studies, and at-scale investigations; these include typically developing children and children at-risk. The collective goal of this symposium is to push for the development of theoretically informed language interventions that affect those features of teachers’ talk within the preschool classroom that have positive effects on children.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Laura Justice, Ohio State University

Individual Presentations

• Addressing the Challenge of Supporting Language in Preschool Classrooms - Presenting Author: David Dickinson, Vanderbilt University

• Using Toy Talk to Promote Literate Language Features in Conversational Interactions - Presenting Author: Pamela Hadley, University of Illinoiw

• Dimensionality of Teachers’ Linguistic Input in Preschool Settings - Presenting Author: Laura Justice, Ohio State University; Hui Jiang, Ohio State University

• Features of teachers’ talk predicts language and preliteracy development in Danish children - Presenting Author: Dorthe Bleses, Aarhus University; Anders Hojen, Aarhus University; Pauline Slot, Utrecht University