A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Children’s Temperament and Parenting Behavior on Vocabulary Development in Children: Mediation Effect of Parenting Behavior

Objectives: This study aimed to help the understanding of children’s temperament and parenting behavior by examining how the temperament and parenting of 3-year-olds affect the vocabulary development of 7-year-old children entering school age.Methods: The study group consisted of a total of four groups based on the scores of the Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test (REVT; Kim et al., 2009). The dataset was obtained through the Panel Study on Korean Children.Results: 1) There was no statistically significant difference between the four groups in the distribution pattern of children’s temperament type, however there was a statistically significant difference between the four groups in the distribution pattern by parenting behavior type. 2) In Group 1, there was a significant positive correlation between vocabulary at 7 years of age and parenting behavior of 3 years olds. In addition, Group 2 and 4, which showed a delay in vocabulary at the age of 7 years, showed that the emotional temperament of 3-year-old children was correlated with their 7-year-old vocabulary. 3) In Group 1, It was found that the emotional (negative) and sociality of children at the age of 3 significantly explained the vocabulary ability at the age of 7 by mediating the parent’s didactic parenting behavior.Conclusion: This study confirmed that the vocabulary prediction model of Group 1, which showed normal vocabulary development in both 3-year-olds and 7-year-olds, was statistically significant.

Parents’ hyper-pitch and vowel category compactness in infant-directed speech are associated with 18-month-old toddlers’ expressive vocabulary

The present study examines the acoustic properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) as compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) in Norwegian parents of 18-month-old toddlers, and whether these properties relate to toddlers’ expressive vocabulary size. Twenty-one parent- toddler dyads from Tromsø, Northern Norway participated in the study. Parents (16 mothers, 5 fathers), speaking a Northern Norwegian dialect, were recorded in the lab reading a storybook to their toddler (IDS register), and to an experimenter (ADS register). The storybook was designed for the purpose of the study, ensuring identical linguistic contexts across speakers and registers, and multiple representations of each of the nine Norwegian long vowels. We examined both traditionally reported measures of IDS: pitch, pitch range, vowel duration and vowel space expansion, but also novel measures: vowel category compactness and vowel category distinctiveness. Our results showed that Norwegian IDS, as compared to ADS, had similar characteristics as in other languages: higher pitch, wider pitch range, longer vowel duration, and expanded vowel space area; in addition, it had less compact vowel categories. Further, parents’ hyper-pitch, that is, the within-parent increase in pitch in IDS as compared to ADS, and vowel category compactness in IDS itself, were positively related to toddlers' vocabulary. Our results point towards potentially facilitating roles of parents’ increase in pitch when talking to their toddler and of consistency in vowel production in early word learning.

Is There a Cognate Effect in Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorder?

Purpose: Cognates, words in two languages that share form and meaning, can be used to support vocabulary development in bilingual children. Typically developing bilinguals have shown better performance on cognates versus noncognates. Of key interest is whether bilinguals with developmental language disorder (DLD) also show a cognate effect and, if so, which factors are related to their cognate performance. Method: Thirty-five Spanish–English bilingual children (5–11 years old) with DLD completed the Expressive and Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Tests, third edition, in English (EOW, ROW) to measure cognate performance. Test items were divided by difficulty level (easy, medium, and hard) and classified as cognates or noncognates using the Cross-Linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology. Results: On average, children showed clear and robust cognate effects on EOW across difficulty levels with medium-to-large effect sizes. Results on the ROW showed minimal effects that varied by difficulty. Individually, 80% of participants (28 of 35) demonstrated a cognate effect in EOW, whereas only 31% (11 of 35) showed an effect in ROW. A cognate effect in ROW was positively correlated with age and English proficiency, whereas no factors correlated with the EOW cognate effect. Conclusions: Bilingual children with DLD show higher performance on cognates than noncognates, at least in expressive vocabulary. Participants who did show a receptive cognate effect tended to be older and have higher English proficiency. Further investigation is needed to identify factors underlying cognate performance in order to tailor intervention strategies that promote bilingual vocabulary development.

Disparate Oral and Written Language Abilities in Adolescents With Cochlear Implants: Evidence From Narrative Samples

Purpose: In spite of improvements in language outcomes for children with hearing loss (HL) arising from cochlear implants (CIs), these children can falter when it comes to academic achievement, especially in higher grades. Given that writing becomes increasingly relevant to educational pursuits as children progress through school, this study explored the hypothesis that one challenge facing students with CIs may be written language. Method: Participants were 98 eighth graders: 52 with normal hearing (NH) and 46 with severe-to-profound HL who used CIs. Oral and written narratives were elicited and analyzed for morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features. Five additional measures were collected and analyzed as possible predictors of morphosyntactic complexity: Sentence Comprehension of Syntax, Grammaticality Judgment, Expressive Vocabulary, Forward Digit Span, and Phonological Awareness. Results: For oral narratives, groups performed similarly on both morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features; for written narratives, critical differences were observed. Compared with adolescents with NH, adolescents with CIs used fewer markers of morphosyntactic complexity and scored lower on several global narrative features in their written narratives. Adolescents with NH outperformed those with CIs on all potential predictor measures, except for Sentence Comprehension of Syntax. Moderately strong relationships were found between predictor variables and individual measures of morphosyntactic complexity, but no comprehensive pattern explained the results. Measures of morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features were not well correlated, suggesting these measures are assessing separate underlying constructs. Conclusions: Adolescents with CIs fail to show writing proficiency at high school entry equivalent to that of their peers with NH, which could constrain their academic achievement. Interventions for children with CIs need to target writing skills, and writing assessments should be incorporated into diagnostic assessments. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17139059

Vocabulary Abilities and Parents’ Emotional Regulation Predict Emotional Regulation in School-Age Children but Not Adolescents With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

A comprehensive approach, including social and emotional affectations, has been recently proposed as an important framework to understand Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). There is an increasing considerable interest in knowing how language and emotion are related, and as far as we know, the role of the emotional regulation (ER) of parents of children with and without DLD, and their impact on their children’s ER is still unknown. The main aims of this study are to advance our knowledge of ER in school-age children and adolescents with and without DLD, to analyze the predictive value of expressive and receptive vocabulary on ER in school-age children and adolescents, and to explore parental ER and their effect on their children’s and adolescents’ ER. To cover all objectives, we carried out three studies. In the first and second study, expressive and receptive vocabulary were assessed in wave 1, and ER (Emotional Regulation Checklist -ERC- for children and Emotion Regulation Scale -DERS- for adolescents) was assessed in wave 2, 4 years later. Participants in the first study consisted of two groups of school-aged children (13 had DLD and 20 were typically developing children -TD). Participants in the second study consisted of two groups of adolescents (16 had DLD and 16 were TD adolescents). In the third study, the ER of 65 of the parents of the children and adolescents from study 1 were assessed during wave 2 via self-reporting the DERS questionnaire. Results showed no significant differences in ER between DLD and TD groups neither in middle childhood nor in adolescence. Concerning vocabulary and ER, expressive language predicted ER in school-age children but not in adolescents. Finally, parental ER explained their school-age children’s ER, but this was not the case in adolescents. In conclusion, the present data indicated that expressive vocabulary has a fundamental role in ER, at least during primary school years, and adds new evidence of the impact of parents’ ER upon their children’s ER, encouraging educators and speech language pathologists to include parents’ assessments in holistic evaluations and interventions for children with language and ER difficulties.

The Role of Social and Emotional Adjustment in Mediating the Relationship Between Early Experiences and Different Language Outcomes

Background: Studies have highlighted the relationship between early childhood experiences and later language and communication skills on the one hand and social and emotional adjustment on the other. Less is known about this relationship between different types of early experiences and their relationship to different communication skills over time. Equally important is the extent to which the child's behaviour is related to later outcomes affecting the relationship between the child's environment and aspects of their communication development.Method: Drawing on data from 5,000 children in Growing Up in Scotland, a representative sample of children born in 2003. This paper looks are the differential relationships between home learning environment (HLE) (reads books/storeys, engages in painting or drawing, reads nursery rhymes and teaches letter/shapes and parental mental health (PMH) (Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) in the first year of life and both structural language skills (“Listening Comprehension” and “Expressive Vocabulary” subtests of The Wechsler Individual Achievement Tests) and pragmatic competence (The Children's Communication Checklist) at 11 years and explores the extent to which they are mediated by social and emotional adjustment at school entry.Results: PMH was associated with pragmatics but not listening comprehension or vocabulary. By contrast HLE was associated with all three measures of communication. In the final mediated model social and emotional adjustment mediated the relationship between PMH and all three measures of communication. The mediation was statistically significant for the relationship between HLE and both pragmatics and listening comprehension but not for expressive vocabulary. The results are discussed in terms of the relationships concerned and what they tell us about the potential for targeted early interventions.Conclusions: The mediating role of socio-emotional adjustment at school entry points to the need for careful monitoring of children's social and emotional development in primary and middle childhood. Services and policy aimed at improving child outcomes through improving home learning environments must work hand in hand with those responsible for offering support for the mental health, social-emotional adjustment and wellbeing of parents and children from birth and into the school years.

Internal and external factors contributing to variability in consonant accuracy of Arabic–French simultaneous bilingual children

This study aims to describe the relationships between child-internal and child-external factors and the consonant accuracy of bilingual children. More specifically, the study looks at internal factors: expressive and receptive vocabulary, and external factors: language exposure and language status, of a group of 4-year-old bilingual Arabic–French children. We measured the consonant accuracy of the children by the percentage of correct consonants in a Picture-Naming Task and a Non-Word Repetition Task in each language. The results suggest a significant relationship between vocabulary and consonant accuracy. A cross-language correlation was observed between the expressive vocabulary level of the majority language (French) and the consonant accuracy of the minority language (Arabic). Also, a significant correlation was found between Arabic language exposure and Arabic consonant accuracy. Finally, consonant accuracy was significantly higher in French tasks than in Arabic, despite the individual differences of the children.

Language Screening in 3-Year-Olds: Development and Validation of a Feasible and Effective Instrument for Pediatric Primary Care

Objective: The study was aimed at evaluating the validity and feasibility of SPES-3 (Sprachentwicklungsscreening), a language screening in 3-year-old children within the constraints of regular preventive medical check-ups.Methods: A four-component screening measure including parental reports on the child's expressive vocabulary and grammar based on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory and pediatrician-administered standardized assessments of noun plurals and sentence comprehension was used in a sample of 2,044 consecutively seen children in 30 pediatric offices. One-hundred forty-four children (70 who failed and 74 who passed the screener) comprised the validation sample and also underwent follow-up gold standard assessment. To avoid verification and spectrum bias multiple imputation of missing diagnosis for children who did not undergo gold standard assessment was used. Independent diagnoses by two experts blinded to the screening results were considered gold standard for diagnosing language disorder. Screening accuracy of each of the four subscales was analyzed using receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves. Feasibility was assessed by use of a questionnaire completed by the pediatricians.Results: The two parental screening subscales demonstrated excellent accuracy with area under the curve (AUC) scores of 0.910 and 0.908 whereas AUC scores were significantly lower for the subscales directly administered by the pediatricians (0.816 and 0.705). A composite score based on both parental screening scales (AUC = 0.946) outperformed single subscales. A cut off of 41.69 on a T-scale resulted in about 20% positive screens and showed good sensitivity (0.878) and specificity (0.876). Practicability, acceptability and sustainability of the screening measure were mostly rated as high.Conclusion: The parent-reported subscales of the SPES-3 language screener are a promising screening tool for use in primary pediatric care settings.

Verb-Mediated Prediction in Bilingual Toddlers

Prediction is an important mechanism for efficient language processing. It has been shown that as a part of sentence processing, both children and adults predict nouns based on semantically constraining verbs. Language proficiency is said to modulate prediction: the higher proficiency, the better the predictive skill. Children growing up acquiring two languages are often more proficient in one of them, and as such, investigation of the predictive ability in young bilingual children can shed light on the role of language proficiency. Furthermore, according to production-based models, the language production system drives the predictive ability. The present study investigates whether bilingual toddlers predict upcoming nouns based on verb meanings in both their languages, and whether this ability is associated with expressive vocabulary. Seventeen Norwegian-English bilingual toddlers (aged 2;5–3;3), dominant in Norwegian, participated in the study. Verb-mediated predictive ability was measured via a visual world paradigm (VWP) experiment, including sentences with semantically constraining and neutral verbs. Expressive vocabulary was measured by MacArthur-Bates CDI II. The results suggested that the toddler group predicted upcoming noun arguments in both their dominant and non-dominant languages, but were faster in their dominant language. This finding highlights the importance of language dominance for predictive processing. There was no significant relationship between predictive ability and expressive vocabulary in either language.