Early gesture use predicts children's language development in South Korea: New evidence supporting the cross-cultural importance of pointing.

Research in the U.S. and other Western countries shows that children's early gesture use, which starts prior to verbal communication, is an important predictor of children's later language development. Despite increasing efforts to study gesture use in diverse contexts, most of our knowledge on the role of gesture is largely based on populations of Western countries. In this study, we add to the growing body of international research by examining gesture use by 31 mothers and their 14-month-old infants (12 girls) in South Korea and investigate the gestures used during interaction, and whether early gesture use at 14 months predicts Korean children's later language skills at 36 months. The results showed that in addition to using gestures observed in other cultural contexts, Korean mother-child dyads used culturally specific gesture (i.e., bowing), showing an early sign of socialization that starts with preverbal children. In addition, Korean infants' index-finger pointing, but not showing and giving, predicted their later receptive and expressive vocabulary skills at 36 months, providing additional support for the importance of pointing in early language development.

The Role of Gesture in Language Development for Neurotypical Children and Children With or at Increased Likelihood of Autism.

For young children, gesture is found to precede and predict language development. However, we are still building a knowledge base about the specific nature of the relationship between gesture and speech. While much of the research on this topic has been conducted with neurotypical children, there is a growing body of work with children who have or are at increased likelihood of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we summarize the literature on relations between gesture and speech, including the role of child gesture production as well as that of gesture exposure (caregiver gesture). We include literature on both neurotypical children and children with or at likelihood of ASD, highlight the similarities and differences across populations, and offer implications for research as well as early identification and intervention.

Comparing apples to manzanas and oranges to naranjas: A new measure of English-Spanish vocabulary for dual language learners.

The valid assessment of vocabulary development in dual-language-learning infants is critical to developmental science. We developed the Dual Language Learners English-Spanish (DLL-ES) Inventories to measure vocabularies of U.S. English-Spanish DLLs. The inventories provide translation equivalents for all Spanish and English items on Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) short forms; extended inventories based on CDI long forms; and Spanish language-variety options. Item-Response Theory analyses applied to Wordbank and Web-CDI data (n = 2603, 12-18 months; n = 6722, 16-36 months; half female; 1% Asian, 3% Black, 2% Hispanic, 30% White, 64% unknown) showed near-perfect associations between DLL-ES and CDI long-form scores. Interviews with 10 Hispanic mothers of 18- to 24-month-olds (2 White, 1 Black, 7 multi-racial; 6 female) provide a proof of concept for the value of the DLL-ES for assessing the vocabularies of DLLs.

The neurophysiology of closed-loop auditory stimulation in sleep: A magnetoencephalography study.

Closed-loop auditory stimulation (CLAS) is a brain modulation technique in which sounds are timed to enhance or disrupt endogenous neurophysiological events. CLAS of slow oscillation up-states in sleep is becoming a popular tool to study and enhance sleep's functions, as it increases slow oscillations, evokes sleep spindles and enhances memory consolidation of certain tasks. However, few studies have examined the specific neurophysiological mechanisms involved in CLAS, in part because of practical limitations to available tools. To evaluate evidence for possible models of how sound stimulation during brain up-states alters brain activity, we simultaneously recorded electro- and magnetoencephalography in human participants who received auditory stimulation across sleep stages. We conducted a series of analyses that test different models of pathways through which CLAS of slow oscillations may affect widespread neural activity that have been suggested in literature, using spatial information, timing and phase relationships in the source-localized magnetoencephalography data. The results suggest that auditory information reaches ventral frontal lobe areas via non-lemniscal pathways. From there, a slow oscillation is created and propagated. We demonstrate that while the state of excitability of tissue in auditory cortex and frontal ventral regions shows some synchrony with the electroencephalography (EEG)-recorded up-states that are commonly used for CLAS, it is the state of ventral frontal regions that is most critical for slow oscillation generation. Our findings advance models of how CLAS leads to enhancement of slow oscillations, sleep spindles and associated cognitive benefits and offer insight into how the effectiveness of brain stimulation techniques can be improved.

Conversation disruptions in early childhood predict executive functioning development: A longitudinal study.

Conversational turn-taking is a complex communicative skill that requires both linguistic and executive functioning (EF) skills, including processing input while simultaneously forming and inhibiting responses until one's turn. Adult-child turn-taking predicts children's linguistic, cognitive, and socioemotional development. However, little is understood about how disruptions to temporal contingency in turn-taking, such as interruptions and overlapping speech, relate to cognitive outcomes, and how these relationships may vary across developmental contexts. In a longitudinal sample of 275 socioeconomically diverse mother-child dyads (children 50% male, 65% White), we conducted pre-registered examinations of whether the frequency of dyads' conversational disruption during free play when children were 3 years old related to children's executive functioning (EF; 9 months later), self-regulation skills (18 months later), and externalizing psychopathology in early adolescence (age 10-12 years). Contrary to hypotheses, more conversational disruptions significantly predicted higher inhibition skills, controlling for sex, age, income-to-needs (ITN), and language ability. Results were driven by maternal disruptions of the child's speech, and could not be explained by measures of overall talkativeness or interactiveness. Exploratory analyses revealed that ITN moderated these relationships, such that the positive effect of disruptions on inhibition was strongest for children from lower ITN backgrounds. We discuss how adult-driven "cooperative overlap" may serve as a form of engaged participation that supports cognition and behavior in certain cultural contexts.

Chinese parents' support of preschoolers' mathematical development.

Research has documented the critical role played by the early home environment in children's mathematical development in Western contexts. Yet little is known about how Chinese parents support their preschoolers' development of math skills. The Chinese context is of particular interest because Chinese children outperform their Western counterparts in math, even early in development. The current study sought to fill this gap by examining a sample of 90 families of 4- and 5-year-olds from mainland China. Parental support-as measured by the frequency of parent-child engagement in home activities as well as parent number talk-and parents' role in children's numeracy skills were investigated. Results indicate wide variation among parents in both types of support. Frequency of engagement in formal numeracy activities, including counting objects and reading number story books, was related to children's knowledge of cardinality. A principal components analysis did not identify informal numeracy activities as a distinct home activity component, likely due to the infrequent occurrences of game-like numeracy activities among the Chinese families. Instead, a structured activity component emerged (e.g., playing musical instruments) and was positively related to children's arithmetic skills. Diversity, but not quantity, of parent number talk was related to children's symbolic magnitude understanding. The distinctive relationships between specific parental measures and child outcomes speak to the need for nuanced identification of home environment factors that are beneficial to particular math competencies. The findings also suggest cultural variations in the mechanisms that support children's mathematical development, highlighting the merits of investigating this topic in non-Western contexts.

"Mom said it in quotation marks!" Irony comprehension and metapragmatic awareness in 8-year-olds.

This study investigated links between the development of children's understanding of ironic comments and their metapragmatic knowledge. Forty-six 8-year-olds completed the short version of the Irony Comprehension Task, during which they were presented with ironic comments in three stories and asked to provide reasons for why the speaker in a story uttered an ironic comment. We coded their responses and compared the results to similar data collected previously with 5-year-olds. Results showed that compared to younger children, 8-year-olds frequently refer to interlocutors' emotions, intentions, and to metapragmatics. These results support the view that comprehension of verbal irony is an emerging skill in children.

Parents' talk about conceptual categories with infants: stability, variability, and implications for expressive language development.

Children's exposure to talk about conceptual categories plays a powerful role in shaping their conceptual development. However, it remains unclear when parents begin to talk about categories with young children and whether such talk relates to children's language skills. This study examines relations between parents' talk about conceptual categories and infants' expressive language development. Forty-seven parent-infant dyads were videotaped playing together at child age 10, 12, 14, and 16 months. Transcripts of interactions were analyzed to identify parents' talk about conceptual categories. Children's expressive language development was assessed at 18 months. Findings indicate that parents indeed talked about conceptual categories with infants and that talk was stable across time, with college-educated parents producing more than non-college-educated parents. Further, parents' talk about conceptual categories between 10 and 16 months predicted children's 18-month expressive language. This study sheds new light on mechanisms through which early experiences may support children's language development.

Experience with pointing gestures facilitates infant vocabulary growth through enhancement of sensorimotor brain activity.

Exposure to communicative gestures, through their parents' use of gestures, is associated with infants' language development. However, the mechanisms supporting this link are not fully understood. In adults, sensorimotor brain activity occurs while processing communicative stimuli, including both spoken language and gestures. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) mu rhythm desynchronization (mu ERD), a marker of sensorimotor activity, we examined whether experimental manipulation of infants' exposure to gestures would affect language development, and specifically whether such an effect would be mediated by changes in sensorimotor brain activity. Mu ERD was measured in 10- to 12-month-old infants (N = 81; 42 male; 15% Hispanic, 62% White) recruited from counties surrounding a large mid-Atlantic university while they observed an experimenter gesturing toward or grasping an object. Half of the infants were randomized to receive increased gesture exposure through a parent-directed training. All 81 infants provided behavioral (infant and parent pointing and infant vocabulary) data prior to intervention and 72 provided behavioral data postintervention. Forty-two infants provided usable (post artifact removal) EEG data prior to intervention and 40 infants provided usable EEG data post-intervention. Twenty-nine infants provided usable EEG data at both sessions. Increased parent gesture due to the intervention was associated with increased infant right lateralized mu ERD at follow-up, but only while observing the experimenter gesturing not grasping. Increased mu ERD, again only while observing the experimenter gesture, was associated with increased infant receptive vocabulary. This is the first evidence suggesting that increasing exposure to gestures may impact infants' language development through an effect on sensorimotor brain activity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

"Let's Read Together": A Parent-Focused Intervention on Dialogic Book Reading to Improve Early Language and Literacy Skills in Preschool Children.

Many children are at risk for reading difficulties because of inadequate emergent literacy skills. It is widely accepted that development of emergent literacy skills is strictly related to children's early literacy experiences at home and school. Dialogic reading is an evidence-based intervention to promote the language skills of preschool children. This study examined the feasibility and efficacy of a parent-focused dialogic book reading intervention that aimed to foster the early language and literacy skills of pre-school children. A sample of 40 Italian preschoolers (Mage = 62.9 months, SD = 6.3) and their parents were divided into three groups: treatment group (n = 12); information group (n = 12) and control group (n = 16). The efficacy of the intervention for oral language skills was examined by analyzing the improvements from pre- to post-intervention in children's oral language outcomes, through ad hoc and standardized tasks; specifically, by measuring proximal and distal abilities. Additionally, we analyzed the intervention effects on parent-child interaction and dialogic behaviors during shared book reading. Results suggest that a relatively brief intervention (6 weeks) using dialogic book reading strategies can lead to sustained improvements in early language and literacy skills in preschoolers (both proximal and distal) and in parent dialogic behaviors during shared book reading.

Environmental influences on early language and literacy development: Social policy and educational implications.

A growing body of literature suggests strong associations between environmental factors and young children's early language and literacy development. In the United States, large socio-economic differences are evident in children's skills when they enter Kindergarten, differences that persist through schooling and can be explained by children's early communicative environments. Here, I highlight three themes that characterize the features of children's communicative environments that are found to promote language learning: (1) Talking with children helps more than talking to children, (2) Linguistic input should increase in diversity and complexity during early childhood, and (3) A gradual transition from contextualized to decontextualized conversations is helpful. There are many reasons for the large variability in early communicative environments within and across social class groups. Two primary reasons include parents' knowledge of child development and parenting stress. Social policies that reduce parenting stress and increase parental knowledge have the potential to improve early language environments and lead to better educational outcomes for all children.

Small Moments, Big Impact: Pilot Trial of a Relational Health App for Primary Care.

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a pilot trial of Small Moments, Big Impact: a relational health app. METHODS: Low-income mothers with 1 or no prior children, a full-term birth, above 18 years old, and without substance abuse were recruited. The control group was recruited prior to the intervention group to avoid contamination. Of the 117 mothers enrolled, 29 intervention and 29 control mothers completed the study. Five questionnaires were administered at baseline and 6-months to measure maternal depression, empathy, beliefs about children's emotions, intelligence mindsets, and app use. At 6 months, questionnaires assessing parenting stress, reflective functioning, and perceived value of app were also administered. RESULTS: Mothers in the final sample were similar to those who did not complete the study, except more mothers who dropped out were recruited during COVID-19 and had a lower empathetic subscale score. No differences were found between groups at pre- or post-test. However, because of skewed outcome variables which violated normality principles and the small sample size, quantile regression analyses were performed comparing the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles for each outcome. Controlling for pretest and potential confounders, subsets of SMBI mothers reported lower parental stress, more growth mindset and increased effort to understand their child's feelings. Ninety percent of mothers reported using SMBI at least once per week. Eighty percent of mothers would recommend the SMBI app to new mothers. CONCLUSIONS: Most mothers used SMBI weekly, rated it highly and reported less stress, more growth mindset, and more positive child rearing beliefs.

Brief Report: Parents' Declarative Use of Deictic Gestures Predict Vocabulary Development in Infants at High and Low Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

We examined the communicative intentions behind parents' deictic gesture use with high-risk infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 17), high-risk infants who were not diagnosed with ASD (n = 25), and low-risk infants (n = 28) at 12 months and assessed the extent to which the parental deictic gesture intentions predicted infants' later vocabulary development. We found that parents in the three groups produced similar numbers of declarative and imperative gestures during a 10-minute parent-child interaction in the lab at 12 months and that 12-month parental declarative gesture use was significantly, positively associated with children's 36-month vocabulary scores. Encouraging parental use of declarative gestures with infants could have important implications for language development.

Exploring the Linguistic, Cognitive, and Social Skills Underlying Lexical Processing Efficiency as Measured by the Looking-while-Listening Paradigm.

The looking-while-listening (LWL) paradigm is frequently used to measure toddlers' lexical processing efficiency (LPE). Children's LPE is associated with vocabulary size, yet other linguistic, cognitive, or social skills contributing to LPE are not well understood. It also remains unclear whether LPE measures from two types of LWL trials (target-initial versus distractor-initial trials) are differentially associated with the abovementioned potential correlates of LPE. We tested 18- to 24-month-olds and found that children's word learning on a fast-mapping task was associated with LPE measures from all trials and distractor-initial trials but not target-initial trials. Children's vocabulary and pragmatic skills were both associated with their fast-mapping performance. Executive functions and pragmatic skills were associated with LPE measures from distractor-initial but not target-initial trials. Hence, LPE as measured by the LWL paradigm may reflect a constellation of skills important to language development. Methodological implications for future studies using the LWL paradigm are discussed.

Parental Language Input Predicts Neuroscillatory Patterns Associated with Language Development in Toddlers at Risk of Autism.

In this study we investigated the impact of parental language input on language development and associated neuroscillatory patterns in toddlers at risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Forty-six mother-toddler dyads at either high (n = 22) or low (n = 24) familial risk of ASD completed a longitudinal, prospective study including free-play, resting electroencephalography, and standardized language assessments. Input quantity/quality at 18 months positively predicted expressive language at 24 months, and relationships were stronger for high-risk toddlers. Moderated mediations revealed that input-language relationships were explained by 24-month frontal and temporal gamma power (30-50 Hz) for high-risk toddlers who would later develop ASD. Results suggest that high-risk toddlers may be cognitively and neurally more sensitive to their language environments, which has implications for early intervention.

American High School Students' Knowledge and Beliefs about Parenting and Early Childhood Development.

Income-based achievement gaps in cognitive skills are already large when children enter Kindergarten. By adopting a preventative approach that considers the efficacy of providing parenting knowledge to individuals before they become parents while they are still in secondary school, we may be able to reduce achievement gaps. In this study, we examined adolescents' knowledge and understanding of parenting and child development by creating and validating the Adolescent Parenting Knowledge and Attitudes Survey and administering it to over 1000 US high school students. This study shows that while many high school students hold beliefs consistent with successful outcomes for young children and their learning, there is much room for increasing their knowledge. The findings are discussed as presenting a potential opportunity to use high school as a site to improve adolescents' knowledge and attitudes related to child rearing and development.

Show, give, and point gestures across infancy differentially predict language development.

It is well established that deictic gestures, especially pointing, play an important role in children's language development. However, recent evidence suggests that other types of deictic gestures, specifically show and give gestures, emerge before pointing and are associated with later pointing. In the present study, we examined the development of show, give, and point gestures in a sample of 47 infants followed longitudinally from 10 to 16 months of age and asked whether there are certain ages during which different gestures are more or less predictive of language skills at 18 months. We also explored whether parents' responses vary as a function of child gesture types. Child gestures and parent responses were reliably coded from videotaped sessions of parent-child interactions. Language skills were measured at 18 months using standardized (Mullen Scales of Early Learning) and parent report (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory) measures. We found that at 10 months, show+give gestures were a better predictor of 18-month language skills than pointing gestures were, yet at 14 months, pointing gestures were a better predictor of 18-month language skills than show+give gestures. By 16 months, children's use of speech in the interaction, not gesture, best predicted 18-month language skills. Parents responded to a higher proportion of shows+gives than to points at 10 months. These results demonstrate that different types of deictic gestures provide a window into language development at different points across infancy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A parent gesture intervention as a means to increase parent declarative pointing and child vocabulary.

This study examined whether a brief parent gesture training resulted in a change in the communicative intent of pointing gestures used by parents of infants from age 10-12 months and whether specific types of points (declarative vs. imperative) were more or less likely to predict later child language skill at 18 months. Compared to parents who were randomized to the control group, parents in the intervention group produced significantly more declarative pointing gestures as a result of the intervention. Moreover, parents' use of declarative points at 12 months was predictive of later child vocabulary comprehension at 18 months. These findings suggest that a short-term parent training can have important effects on the communicative intentions conveyed through gesture which predict vocabulary development.

Neuroplasticity associated with changes in conversational turn-taking following a family-based intervention.

Children's early language environments are associated with linguistic, cognitive, and academic development, as well as concurrent brain structure and function. This study investigated neurodevelopmental mechanisms linking language input to development by measuring neuroplasticity associated with an intervention designed to enhance language environments of families primarily from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Families of 52 4-to-6 year-old children were randomly assigned to a 9-week, interactive, family-based intervention or no-contact control group. Children completed pre- and post-assessments of verbal and nonverbal cognition (n = 52), structural magnetic resonance imaging (n = 45), and home auditory recordings of language exposure (n = 39). Families who completed the intervention exhibited greater increases in adult-child conversational turns, and changes in turn-taking mediated intervention effects on language and executive functioning measures. Collapsing across groups, turn-taking changes were also positively correlated with cortical thickening in left inferior frontal and supramarginal gyri, the latter of which mediated relationships between changes in turn-taking and children's language development. This is the first study of longitudinal neuroplasticity in response to changes in children's language environments, and findings suggest that conversational turns support language development through cortical growth in language and social processing regions. This has implications for early interventions to enhance children's language environments to support neurocognitive development.

A Longitudinal Study of Parent Gestures, Infant Responsiveness, and Vocabulary Development in Infants at Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

We investigated gestures that parents used with 12-, 18-, and 24-month-old infants at high or low risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD; high-risk diagnosed with ASD: n = 21; high-risk classified as no ASD: n = 34; low-risk classified as no ASD: n = 34). We also examined infant responses to parent gestures and assessed the extent to which parent gesture relates to vocabulary development. Parents of three groups gestured in similar frequencies and proportions. Infants, in turn, responded similarly to parent gestures regardless of the infant's ASD risk and later diagnosis. Finally, parents who gestured more at 12 months had children with better vocabulary at 36 months than parents who gestured less. These findings highlight the importance of examining parent gestures when predicting language development.