Exploring Relations between Toddlers’ Motor Skills and Language Development

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Studies have documented associations between infants’ motor skills and receptive vocabulary (Libertus & Violi, 2016). Infants’ motor development may facilitate language acquisition by enriching children’s exploration of the physical world and creating more learning opportunities (Iverson, 2010). Moreover, children with more advanced motor skills tend to receive richer input (Karasik, Tamis-LeMonda, & Adolph, 2015), which may promote language development. However, it is less clear whether the associations between motor and language skills extend beyond infancy into toddlerhood. A study by LeBarton and Iverson (2013) sheds some light on this important question. In a group of infants with a family history of autism, motor skills between 12 to 24 months predicted 36-month expressive vocabulary. Nevertheless, whether these relations exist among typically developing (TD) toddlers remains unclear. Further, we know little about whether motor skills relate to language skills besides vocabulary, such as pragmatic skills.
This study explores whether toddlers’ motor skills are associated with their vocabulary and pragmatic skills. Fifteen monolingual and 15 bilingual TD toddlers (M_age = 23.67 months, range_age = 18-30 months) and their parents visited a university laboratory. On average, parents received 17.53 years of education, SD = 1.01, and all parents attended college. Prior to the visit, parents reported toddlers’ expressive vocabulary using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) short form (Fenson et al., 2007). During the visit, parents filled out a demographic survey and reported children’s gross motor development and perception-action skills using the Early Motor Questionnaire (EMQ; Libertus & Landa, 2013). Children’s fine motor skills and visual-motor coordination were assessed using the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales - 2nd Edition (PDMS-2; Folio & Fewell, 2000). After the visit, parents completed the Language Use Inventory (LUI; O'Neill, 2009), a standardized parent report measure of children’s pragmatic development (i.e., language use in social contexts).
Overall, we found notable individual differences in toddlers’ motor and language skills (Table 1 shows descriptive statistics), except that the EMQ gross motor subscale scores were less varied. Controlling for parent education, language status (monolingual/bilingual; the outcome variables did not differ by language status), and age, raw scores from the EMQ gross motor subscale and the PDMS-2 visual-motor coordination subscale were each individually correlated with children’s expressive vocabulary (CDI raw scores), βs = 0.42 and 0.40 respectively, ps = 0.02 and 0.04, SEs = 0.17 and 0.18. However, EMQ gross motor raw scores and PDMS-2 visual-motor coordination scores were uncorrelated with vocabulary, ps > .05. As for pragmatic skills, raw scores from both EMQ subscales, gross motor and perception-action, were marginally related to LUI raw scores, βs = 0.25 and 0.40 respectively, ps = 0.09 and 0.05, SEs = 0.13 and 0.12. PDMS-2 scores were unassociated with pragmatic skills, ps > .1. Data collection is ongoing and we will test these relations in a larger sample.
Although correlational, this study is the first to show that motor development may facilitate language learning in toddlerhood. Our findings also provide preliminary evidence that in addition to vocabulary, motor skills may also contribute to children’s pragmatic skills.

Authors

• Ran Wei, Harvard Medical School
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Surrain, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meredith L. Rowe, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gigi Luk, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author