Interrelations between communicative behaviors at the outset of speech: parents as observers (original) (raw)
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Infant-parent interactions are bidirectional; therefore, it is important to understand how infants' communicative behavior elicits variable responses from caregivers and, in turn, how infants' behavior varies with caregivers' responses; furthermore, how these moment-to-moment interactive behaviors relate to later language development. The current study addressed these concerns by observing 10-to 13-month-old infants' interactions with their mothers and measuring their language outcomes when they were 15 months old. The main results were: (1) infants were more likely to combine vocalizations with pointing when mothers were not looking at the target of the point, and when mothers did not respond about the target of the point; (2) infants' combination of vocalization and pointing behavior, especially those produced when mothers were not attending to the target object of the point, related to infants' comprehension skills at 15 months as measured by the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI); (3) maternal follow-in responses were related to infants' improvement in their comprehension and production scores on the MCDI. These results suggest that infants' own prelinguistic communicative acts that are produced differentially as a function of maternal attention and responses, and the maternal responses that they elicit, contribute to infants' subsequent language development.
Maternal expression of communicative intentions and pragmatic fine tuning in early infancy
Infant Behavior and Development, 2010
This study focuses on pragmatic characteristics of infant-directed speech and pragmatic fine tuning during the first 18 months of life. The subjects of the study were a mother-child dyad involved in a longitudinal/observational study in a familial context. Audiovisual recordings were transcribed according to the conventions of the Child Language Data Exchange System (MacWhinney, 2000; MacWhinney & Snow, 1990). The Ninio and Wheeler's (1988) system for coding communicative intentions was adapted. The results of this research show that most of the communicative exchanges identified at 14, 20 and 32 months by Snow, Pan, Imbens-Bailey, and Herman (1996) appear in mother-child interaction from the beginning, while other communicative interchanges appear later. With respect to speech acts, the results highlight, from an early age, the general tendencies discussed by Snow et al. and some novelties. Interestingly, changes in some pragmatic measures were identified around 8 months of age, and the appearance of new communicative interchanges also took place around this age. These changes are interpreted as maternal adjustments to the child's communicative competence.
Developmental Changes in Early Communicative Competence
1991
A proposed model of communicative behavior suggests a series of seven progressively more complex levels of communicative competence: (1) behavior state; (2) recognitory; (3) contingency; (4) instrumental; (5) triadic; (6) verbal-contextual; and (7) verbal-decontextual. Tables define these levels in detail and list their characteristics. Each level is exemplified by particular engagement and termination behaviors. In a study designed to determine whether children follow the proposed model, a total of 68 children between 1 day and 30 months of age were observed while playing with their mothers. Interactions were coded for children's communicative behaviors, and performance criteria were established for mastery of each level of communicative competence. Also noted were the age at which a behavior from a particular level first appeared; the basal age, at which at least one child met the criteria for mastery of a behavior; and the ceiling age, at which all children exhibited mastery of the level. Results indicated that, beginning with level 3, the first appearance of a behavior from a level was concurrent with the basal age for the preceding level. Results supported the proposed model. Estimated age ranges fo-each level are given. A list of 55 references is provided. Appendixes include definitions of specific termination and engagement behaviors in each of the levels and a copy of the observation coding form. (SC)
Is Early Speech Situational? The Relation of Early Utterances to the Context
1991
A study on children's speech is prefaced by an extensive theoretical discussion. An attempt to construct a taxonomy that captured psychologically real, discrete types of communicative acts in mother-child interactions was based on the insight that verbal utterances are social acts that are meaningful in particular social situations. The taxonomy was formulated from an analysis of mother-infant interactions and a study of sociological theories. The key distinction made in the taxonomy is between the presence and separation of the communicants. Utterances are classified into several types, including: negotiations, markings, evaluations, conversations, performances, acknowledgements, metacommunication, and text editing. In all, the taxonomy distinguishes 65 types of talk. FroM this taxonomy, other researchers have developed abridged verbal utterance coding systems. The study investigated the possibility that utterances are produced as responses to situations or as expressions of communicative intent. The speech interRctions of two samples.of Israeli Hebrew-speaking, mother-infant dyads were analyzed. Results indicated that even though infants made more context-embedded utterances at 10 months of age than at le months, those utterances accounted for only 30 percent of all utterances. The great majority of children's utterances were independent of the ongoing context. A reference list of 39 items is included. (BC)
Development of communicative skills in 8- to 16-month-old children: a longitudinal study
Interspeech 2008, 2008
The aim of this study was to assess development of communicative skills in 8-to 16-month-old children. Information on 24 Swedish children's speech comprehension and production, as well as their utilization of communicative gestures was collected. A version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, the Swedish Early Communicative Development Inventory (SECDI), was used. The number of comprehended phrases, size of receptive and productive vocabularies, as well as the subjects' gesture score was estimated according to standardized scoring instructions. The study was performed longitudinally based on 71 completed forms. The children's performance was validated with existing norm-data collected from a large set of randomly selected children. The results showed an overall agreement with the norm-data. The performance of the subjects was though less stable and delayed about one month as compared to the norm-data. Adequacy of SECDI for screening language delay is discussed.
Infancy, 2003
The extent to which mothers and fathers agree on what they identify as their infant's communicative acts was investigated. Nineteen infants (6 at 6 months, 7 at 9 months, and 6 at 12 months) and their parents participated. A randomization procedure controlled for the frequencies and durations of the communicative acts identified by the parents, and the procedure produced a distribution of 10,000 "chance" agreement values for each parent pair with which their observed level of agreement was compared. The results indicated that, generally, parents could identify their infant's communicative acts consistently, and that observed levels of agreement between parents were significantly higher than would be expected by chance. Differences between mothers and fathers on their identification of communicative acts are considered in terms of the emergence of the infant's intention to communicate.
International journal of language & communication disorders, 2017
Identifying risk and protective factors for language development informs interventions for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Maternal responsive and intrusive communicative behaviours are associated with language development. Mother-child interaction quality may influence how children use these behaviours in language learning. To identify (1) communicative behaviours and interaction quality associated with language outcomes; (2) whether the association between a maternal intrusive behaviour (directive) and child language scores changed alongside a maternal responsive behaviour (expansion); and (3) whether interaction quality modified these associations. Language skills were assessed at 24, 36 and 48 months in 197 community-recruited children who were slow to talk at 18 months. Mothers and 24-month-olds were video-recorded playing at home. Maternal praise, missed opportunities, and successful and unsuccessful directives (i.e., whether followed by the child) were co...
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2007
Purpose: This study was conducted to compare the prelinguistic communicative abilities of toddlers with hearing loss and without hearing loss during the 2nd year of life and shortly before the emergence of productive single-word lexicons. Method: The participants were 28 toddlers with hearing loss who participated in an early intervention program and 92 toddlers with normal hearing at similar language levels and close chronological ages. The assessment consisted of the Hebrew Parent Questionnaire-Communication and Early Language (HPQ-CEL; E. Dromi, H. Ben-Shahar-Treitel, E. Guralnik, & D. ) that guided parents' observations of their toddlers in 6 contexts at home. Parents reported on a range of prelinguistic communicative abilities. Results: Profile analysis indicated that the 2 groups used a remarkably similar overall profile of prelinguistic behaviors. Interrelationships among behaviors were noticeably similar, too. Two communication properties unique to toddlers with hearing loss were relatively lower spontaneous use of words and reduced involvement in triadic book reading interactions. In addition, the associations between use of words and gestures in toddlers with hearing loss were slightly different from the toddlers with normal hearing, and the range of innovative gestures that they produced was greater. Conclusion: The remarkable similarity between the 2 groups support the feasibility of adopting goals and principles known to hold true in typical development for fostering communication in toddlers with hearing loss.
Social and communicative development in infancy
1992
The evidence presented in this chapter suggests that infant communicative action is highly context specific, showing remarkable variability to even subtle alterations of the social and physical settings in which interaction occurs.
Maternal responsiveness and the development of directed vocalizing in social interactions
For effective communication, infants must develop the phonology of sounds and the ability to use vocalizations in social interactions. Few studies have examined the development of the pragmatic use of prelinguistic vocalizations, possibly because gestures are considered hallmarks of early pragmatic skill. The current study investigated infant vocal production and maternal responsiveness to examine the relationship between infant and maternal behavior in the development of infants' vocal communication. Specifically, we asked whether maternal responses to vocalizations could influence the development of prelinguistic vocal usage, as has been documented in recent experimental studies exploring the relation between maternal responses and phonological development. Twelve mother-infant dyads participated over a six-month period (between 8 and 14 months of age). Mothers completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory when infants were 15 months old. Maternal sensitive responses to infant vocalizations in the previous months predicted infants' mother-directed vocalizations in the following months, rather than overall response rate. Furthermore, mothers' sensitive responding to mother-directed vocalizations was correlated with an increase in developmentally advanced, consonant-vowel vocalizations and Correspondence should be sent to some language measures. This is the first study to document a social shaping mechanism influencing developmental change in pragmatic usage of vocalizations in addition to identifying the specific behaviors underlying development.