Change the Things You Can: Modifiable Parent Characteristics Predict High-Quality Early Language Interaction Within Socioeconomic Status.

Purpose Understanding variability sources in early language interaction is critical to identifying children whose development is at risk and designing interventions. Variability across socioeconomic status (SES) groups has been extensively explored. However, SES is a limited individual clinical indicator. For example, it is not generally directly modifiable. The purpose of this study was to examine if child language ability, input quantity and quality, and dyadic interaction were associated with modifiable caregiver characteristics-self-efficacy and developmental knowledge. Method We conducted secondary analyses using the baseline data (n = 41 dyads enrolled, n = 30 analyzed) from a longitudinal study. Mothers and children (1;0-2;3 [years;months]) in low-income households completed demographic questionnaires, self-efficacy and developmental knowledge measures, child language assessments, and interaction samples. We used linear regression models to examine the relationship between self-efficacy, developmental knowledge, and outcomes. Results Child receptive and expressive language scores were significantly associated with mothers' self-efficacy, knowledge, and Efficacy × Knowledge interaction. Specifically, maternal self-efficacy was positively associated with child language only in the context of high developmental knowledge. Neither self-efficacy nor developmental knowledge was significantly associated with the number of total or different words mothers produced. However, self-efficacy was significantly and positively associated with the rate of child-initiated conversational turns per minute, controlling for the number of child utterances. Mothers with higher self-efficacy responded more readily to their children than those with lower self-efficacy. Conclusions Child language ability and interaction quality vary based on modifiable parent characteristics. Modifiable individual characteristics should be considered in early language interaction within and across SES groups.

Trading Spaces: Carving Up Events for Learning Language.

Relational terms (e.g., verbs and prepositions) are the cornerstone of language development, bringing together two distinct fields: linguistic theory and infants' event processing. To acquire relational terms such as run, walk, in, and on, infants must first perceive and conceptualize components of dynamic events such as containment-support, path-manner, source-goal, and figure-ground. Infants must then uncover how the particular language they are learning encodes these constructs. This review addresses the interaction of language learning with infants' conceptualization of these nonlinguistic spatial event components. We present the thesis that infants start with language-general nonlinguistic constructs that are gradually refined and tuned to the requirements of their native language. In effect, infants are trading spaces, maintaining their sensitivity to some relational distinctions while dampening other distinctions, depending on how their native language expresses these constructs.

Infants discriminate manners and paths in non-linguistic dynamic events.

Do 14- to 17-month-olds notice the paths and manners of motion events? English- and Spanish-learning infants were habituated to an animated motion event including a manner (e.g., spinning) and a path (e.g., over). They were then tested on four types of events that changed either the manner, the path, both, or neither component. Both English- and Spanish-learning infants attended to changes of manner and changes of path. Thus, infants from two different language communities proved sensitive to components of events that undergird relational term learning.