Behavioral observation and assessment protocol for language and social-emotional development study in children aged 0-6: the Chinese baby connectome project.

BACKGROUND: The global rise in developmental delays underscores the critical need for a thorough understanding and timely interventions during early childhood. Addressing this issue, the Chinese Baby Connectome Project (CBCP)'s behavior branch is dedicated to examining language acquisition, social-emotional development, and environmental factors affecting Chinese children. The research framework is built around three primary objectives: developing a 0-6 Child Development Assessment Toolkit, implementing an Intelligent Coding System, and investigating environmental influence. METHODS: Utilizing an accelerated longitudinal design, the CBCP aims to enlist a minimum of 1000 typically developing Chinese children aged 0-6. The data collected in this branch constitutes parental questionnaires, behavioral assessments, and observational experiments to capture their developmental milestones and environmental influences holistically. The parental questionnaires will gauge children's developmental levels in language and social-emotional domains, alongside parental mental well-being, life events, parenting stress, parenting styles, and family relationships. Behavioral assessments will involve neurofunctional developmental evaluations using tools such as the Griffiths Development Scales and Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. Additionally, the assessments will encompass measuring children's executive functions (e.g., Head-Toe-Knee-Shoulder), social cognitive abilities (e.g., theory of mind), and language development (e.g., Early Chinese Vocabulary Test). A series of behavior observation. experiments will be conducted targeting children of different age groups, focusing primarily on aspects such as behavioral inhibition, compliance, self-control, and social-emotional regulation. To achieve the objectives, established international questionnaires will be adapted to suit local contexts and devise customized metrics for evaluating children's language and social-emotional development; deep learning algorithms will be developed in the observational experiments to enable automated behavioral analysis; and statistical models will be built to factor in various environmental variables to comprehensively outline developmental trajectories and relationships. DISCUSSION: This study's integration of diverse assessments and AI technology will offer a detailed analysis of early childhood development in China, particularly in the realms of language acquisition and social-emotional skills. The development of a comprehensive assessment toolkit and coding system will enhance our ability to understand and support the development of Chinese children, contributing significantly to the field of early childhood development research. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was registered with clinicaltrials.gov NCT05040542 on September 10, 2021.

Cesarean birth is associated with lower motor and language development scores during early childhood: a longitudinal analysis of two cohorts.

With global C-section rates rising, understanding potential consequences is imperative. Previous studies suggested links between birth mode and psychological outcomes. This study evaluates the association of birth mode and neurodevelopment in young children across two prospective cohorts, using repeated psychometric assessments. Data from the ELEMENT (Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants) and PROGRESS (Programming Research in Obesity, Growth, and Environment and Social Stress) cohorts, comprising 7158 and 2202 observations of 1402 children aged 2 to 36 months, and 726 children aged 5 to 27 months, respectively, were analyzed. Exclusion criteria for the cohorts were maternal diseases such as preeclampsia, renal or heart disease, gestational diabetes, and epilepsy. Neurodevelopment was gauged via Bayley's Scales of Infant Development: 2nd edition for ELEMENT and 3rd edition for PROGRESS. Mixed-effects models longitudinally estimated associations between birth mode and neurodevelopment scores, adjusting for cofounders. In ELEMENT, psychomotor development composite scores were significantly affected by birth mode from ages 2 to 8 months; the largest estimate within this range was at 2 months (ß =-1.93; 95% CI: [-3.64, -0.22], reference: vaginal delivery). For PROGRESS, a negative association was found with motor development composite scores over all the studied age range (ß=-1.91; 95% CI: [-3.01, -0.81]). The association was stronger between ages 6 to 18 months, with the strongest estimate at 11 months (ß=-2.58; 95% CI: [-4.37, -0.74]). A negative impact of C-section on language scores in girls was estimated for the PROGRESS cohort (ß=-1.92; 95% CI: [-3.57, -0.27]), most marked in ages 22 to 25 months (largest ß at 24.5 months=-3.04; 95% CI: [-5.79, -0.30]). Children born by C-section showed lower motor and language development scores during specific age windows in the first three years of life. Further research is necessary to understand the complexities and implications of these findings.

A Simple Computational Model of Semantic Priming in 18-Month-Olds.

We propose a simple computational model that describes potential mechanisms underlying the organization and development of the lexical-semantic system in 18-month-old infants. We focus on two independent aspects: (i) on potential mechanisms underlying the development of taxonomic and associative priming, and (ii) on potential mechanisms underlying the effect of Inter Stimulus Interval on these priming effects. Our model explains taxonomic priming between words by semantic feature overlap, whereas associative priming between words is explained by Hebbian links between semantic representations derived from co-occurrence relations between words (or their referents). From a developmental perspective, any delay in the emergence of taxonomic priming compared to associative priming during infancy seems paradoxical since feature overlap per se need not be learned. We address this paradox in the model by showing that feature overlap itself is an emergent process. The model successfully replicates infant data related to Inter Stimulus Interval effects in priming experiments and makes testable predictions.

Is frontal EEG gamma power a neural correlate of language in toddlerhood? An examination of late talking and expressive language ability.

Few studies have examined neural correlates of late talking in toddlers, which could aid in understanding etiology and improving diagnosis of developmental language disorder (DLD). Greater frontal gamma activity has been linked to better language skills, but findings vary by risk for developmental disorders, and this has not been investigated in late talkers. This study examined whether frontal gamma power (30-50 Hz), from baseline-state electroencephalography (EEG), was related to DLD risk (categorical late talking status) and a continuous measure of expressive language in n = 124 toddlers. Frontal gamma power was significantly associated with late talker status when controlling for demographic factors and concurrent receptive language (ß = 1.96, McFadden's Pseudo R2 = 0.21). Demographic factors and receptive language did not significantly moderate the association between frontal gamma power and late talker status. A continuous measure of expressive language ability was not significantly associated with gamma (r = -0.07). Findings suggest that frontal gamma power may be useful in discriminating between groups of children that differ in DLD risk, but not for expressive language along a continuous spectrum of ability.

Enhanced efficiency in the bilingual brain through the inter-hemispheric cortico-cerebellar pathway in early second language acquisition.

Bilingualism has a profound impact on the structure and function of the brain, but it is not yet well understood how this experience influences brain functional organization. We examine a large sample (151 participants) of monolinguals and bilinguals with varied age of second language acquisition, who underwent resting-state functional magnetic brain imaging. Whole-brain network analyses reveal higher global efficiency in bilingual individuals than monolinguals, indicating enhanced functional integration in the bilingual brain. Moreover, the age at which the second language was acquired correlated with this increased efficiency, suggesting that earlier exposure to a second language has lasting positive effects on brain functional organization. Further investigation using the network-based statistics approach indicates that this effect is primarily driven by heightened functional connectivity between association networks and the cerebellum. These findings show that the timing of bilingual learning experience alters the brain functional organization at both global and local levels.

Software for assessment and monitoring the decoding skills development of children from the elementary school: validity based on response process. / Software para avaliação e monitoramento do desenvolvimento da decodificação em escolares do Ensino Fundamental I: validade baseada nos processos de resposta.

PURPOSE: To continue the validation process of the Decoding Development Monitoring Protocol (PRADE) in software format in the validity evidence stage based on response processes. METHODS: 250 individuals participated in this study, 125 individuals from private schools and 125 individuals from public schools. The assessment was carried out in person using the software that hosts the instrument's tasks, which are organized into decoding linguistically balanced words and non-words, respecting the decoding rules of Brazilian Portuguese. The software prepares an individual performance report for each participant, counting the decoding time for each stimulus, as well as the number of words decoded correctly. The data is organized considering the correct decoding time of the stimuli, decoding accuracy and percentage of correct answers. All data underwent statistical analysis using SPSS software. RESULTS: The data indicated an important effect of the length of words and non-words on public and private school students. Furthermore, it was possible to observe the evolution of decoding, depending on the school year, in all the variables studied. In both groups, a strong influence of non-words on student performance throughout Elementary School I was observed. CONCLUSION: The data indicate validity in the analysis of response processes, since it was possible to adequately characterize the performance of school children public and private throughout Elementary School I, characterizing each group, as well as their differences according to the advancement of schooling.

OBJETIVO: Dar seguimento ao processo de validação do Protocolo de Acompanhamento do Desenvolvimento da Decodificação (PRADE) em formato de software na etapa de evidência de validade baseada nos processos de resposta. MÉTODO: Foram participantes deste estudo 250 indivíduos, sendo 125 indivíduos oriundos de escola privada e 125 indivíduos oriundos de escola pública. A avaliação foi realizada presencialmente por meio do software que hospeda as tarefas do instrumento, as quais são organizadas em decodificação de palavras e não-palavras balanceadas linguisticamente respeitando-se as regras de decodificação do Português Brasileiro. O software elabora relatório individual de desempenho de cada participante contabilizando o tempo de decodificação de cada estímulo, assim como o número de palavras decodificadas corretamente. Os dados são organizados de forma a contabilizar o tempo de decodificação correta dos estímulos, acurácia de decodificação e porcentagem de acertos. Todos os dados passaram por análise estatística por meio do software SPSS. RESULTADOS: Os dados indicaram importante efeito da extensão de palavras e não-palavras em estudantes de escola pública e privada. Ademais, foi possível observar a evolução da decodificação, em função do ano escolar, em todas as variáveis estudadas. Em ambos os grupos observou-se forte influência das não-palavras no desempenho dos estudantes em todo o Ensino Fundamental I. CONCLUSÃO: Os dados indicam validade na análise dos processos de resposta, uma vez que foi possível caracterizar adequadamente o desempenho de crianças de escola pública e privada em todo o Ensino Fundamental I, caracterizando cada grupo, bem como suas diferenças conforme o avanço da escolaridade.

Cognitive development: The origins of structured thought in the mind.

Linguistic syntax lets us communicate complex, structured thoughts, like whether a dog chased a man or vice versa. New work shows that seven-month-olds can entertain such structured thoughts even before acquiring their native language, revealing the origins of this sophisticated ability.

Leader-follower dynamics during early social interactions matter for infant word learning.

We know little about the mechanisms through which leader-follower dynamics during dyadic play shape infants' language acquisition. We hypothesized that infants' decisions to visually explore a specific object signal focal increases in endogenous attention, and that when caregivers respond to these proactive behaviors by naming the object it boosts infants' word learning. To examine this, we invited caregivers and their 14-mo-old infants to play with novel objects, before testing infants' retention of the novel object-label mappings. Meanwhile, their electroencephalograms were recorded. Results showed that infants' proactive looks toward an object during play associated with greater neural signatures of endogenous attention. Furthermore, when caregivers named objects during these episodes, infants showed greater word learning, but only when caregivers also joined their focus of attention. Our findings support the idea that infants' proactive visual explorations guide their acquisition of a lexicon.

A new way to identify if variation in children's input could be developmentally meaningful: Using computational cognitive modeling to assess input across socio-economic status for syntactic islands.

While there are always differences in children's input, it is unclear how often these differences impact language development - that is, are developmentally meaningful - and why they do (or do not) do so. We describe a new approach using computational cognitive modeling that links children's input to predicted language development outcomes, and can identify if input differences are potentially developmentally meaningful. We use this approach to investigate if there is developmentally-meaningful input variation across socio-economic status (SES) with respect to the complex syntactic knowledge called syntactic islands. We focus on four island types with available data about the target linguistic behavior. Despite several measurable input differences for syntactic island input across SES, our model predicts this variation not to be developmentally meaningful: it predicts no differences in the syntactic island knowledge that can be learned from that input. We discuss implications for language development variability across SES.

Predictive Measures in Child Language Development: The Role of Familial History and Early Expressive Vocabulary.

PURPOSE: Prediction of developmental language disorder in children under 3 years of age is challenging. Among early risk factors, research has focused on having a positive familial history (FH+) for language or literacy problems and on late language emergence, that is, late-talker (LT) status. The interaction between these two risk factors and their cumulative effect is still debated. Here, we (a) investigate the effect of FH+ on 24-month language development, (b) test for cumulative effects of FH+ status and early language delay on 36-month language outcomes, and (c) disentangle the direct and indirect effects of familial history (FH) on the language outcome. METHOD: One hundred eighty-five Italian children were followed up longitudinally between 24 and 36 months of age (64 FH+ and 121 FH-) through parental questionnaires and direct child assessment. RESULTS: At the age of 24 months, the FH+ group showed worse expressive vocabulary and higher prevalence of LT. At the age of 36 months, main effects of LT and FH were identified on lexical and phonological performances, respectively. Interestingly, significant interaction effects were identified on expressive vocabulary and phonological processing. Path analysis highlights that FH had a direct effect on later measures of phonology, whereas its effect on 36-month lexical abilities was indirect, via measures of expressive vocabulary at 24 months. CONCLUSIONS: The study suggests specific predictive roles of FH and LT status on language development. Interestingly, FH+ seems to represent an additive risk for LT children. The use of cumulative risk measures is confirmed as a powerful approach to identify those children with the highest probability of developing persistent language difficulties. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.26790580.

Are Late Talkers Just Late? Neighborhood Density and Word Frequency Properties of Late Talkers' Spoken Vocabularies.

PURPOSE: Typically developing toddlers extract patterns from their input to add words to their spoken lexicons, yet some evidence suggests that late talkers leverage the statistical regularities of the ambient language differently than do peers. Using the extended statistical learning account, we sought to compare lexical-level statistical features of spoken vocabularies between late talkers and two typically developing comparison groups. METHOD: MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories American English Words and Sentences (N = 1,636) were extracted from Wordbank, a database of CDIs. Inventories were divided into three groups: (a) a late talker group (n = 202); (b) a typically developing age-matched group (n = 1,238); and (c) a younger, typically developing group (n = 196) matched to the late talkers on expressive language. Neighborhood density and word frequency were calculated for each word produced by each participant and standardized to z scores. Mixed-effects models were used to evaluate group differences. RESULTS: The late talker and younger, language-matched groups' spoken vocabularies consist, on standardized average, of words from denser phonological neighborhoods and words higher in frequency of occurrence in parent-child speech, compared to older, typically developing toddlers. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide support for the extended statistical learning account. Late talkers appear to generally be extracting and using similar patterns from their language input as do younger toddlers with similar levels of expressive vocabulary. This suggests that late talkers may be following a delayed, not deviant, trajectory of expressive language growth.

Caregivers as experimenters: Reducing unfamiliarity helps shy children learn words.

Previous work has found that shy children show chance-level disambiguation and retention of novel word meanings in a typical lab-based word learning task. This effect could be explained in terms of shy children's aversion to unfamiliarity disrupting the requisite attentional processes, because the task is marked by a high degree of unfamiliarity. To test this argument, we examined whether increasing the familiarity of the task facilitates shy children's ability to form and retain word meanings. Two-year-old children (N = 23) took part in a word learning task in which their caregiver acted as the experimenter. On referent selection trials, children were presented with sets of three objects, one novel and two familiar, and were asked for either a familiar object using its known label, or a novel object using a novel word. Children were then tested on their retention of the previously formed novel word-object mappings. In this context of increased familiarity, shyness was unrelated to performance on referent selection trials. However, shyness was positively related to children's retention of the word-object mappings, meaning that shyer children outperformed less-shy children on this measure of word learning. These findings show that context-based familiarity interacts with intrinsic individual differences to affect word learning performance.

Lateralization of activation within the superior temporal gyrus during speech perception in sleeping infants is associated with subsequent language skills in kindergarten: A passive listening task-fMRI study.

Brain asymmetries are hypothesized to reduce functional duplication and thus have evolutionary advantages. The goal of this study was to examine whether early brain lateralization contributes to skill development within the speech-language domain. To achieve this goal, 25 infants (2-13 months old) underwent behavioral language examination and fMRI during sleep while listening to forward and backward speech, and then were assessed on various language skills at 55-69 months old. We observed that infant functional lateralization of the superior temporal gyrus (STG) for forward > backward speech was associated with phonological, vocabulary, and expressive language skills 4 to 5 years later. However, we failed to observe that infant language skills or the anatomical lateralization of STG were related to subsequent language skills. Overall, our findings suggest that infant functional lateralization of STG for speech perception may scaffold subsequent language acquisition, supporting the hypothesis that functional hemisphere asymmetries are advantageous.

Adults Adapt to Child Speech in Causative Semantics.

Causation is a core feature of human cognition and language. How children learn about intricate causal meanings is yet unresolved. Here, we focus on how children learn verbs that express causation. Such verbs, known as lexical causatives (e.g., break and raise), lack explicit morphosyntactic markers indicating causation, thus requiring that the child generalizes the causal meaning from the context. The language addressed to children presumably plays a crucial role in this learning process. Hence, we tested whether adults adapt their use of lexical causatives to children when talking to them in day-to-day interactions. We analyzed naturalistic longitudinal data from 12 children in the Manchester corpus (spanning from 20 to 36 months of age). To detect semantic generalization, we employed a network approach with semantics learned from cross-situational contexts. Our results show an increasing trend in the expansion of causative semantics, observable in both child speech and child-directed speech. Adults consistently maintain somewhat more intricate causative semantic networks compared to children. However, both groups display evolving patterns. Around 28-30 months of age, children undergo a reduction in the degree of causative generalization, followed by a slightly time-lagged adjustment by adults in their speech directed to children. These findings substantiate adults' adaptation in child-directed speech, extending to semantics. They highlight child-directed speech as a highly adaptive and subconscious teaching tool that facilitates the dynamic processes of language acquisition.

Dogs with a vocabulary of object labels retain them for at least 2 years.

Long-term memory of words has a crucial role in the developing abilities of young children to acquire language. In dogs, the ability to learn object labels is present in only a small group of uniquely gifted word learner (GWL) dogs. As they are very rare, little is known about the mechanisms through which they acquire such large vocabularies. In the current study, we tested the ability of five GWL dogs to retrieve 12 labelled objects 2 years after the object-label mapping acquisition. The dogs proved to remember the labels of between three and nine objects. The results shed light on the process by which GWL dogs acquire an exceptionally large vocabulary of object names. As memory plays a crucial role in language development, these dogs provide a unique opportunity to study label retention in a non-linguistic species.

Language development in children's natural environments: People, places, and things.

Our goal in this chapter is to describe young children's experiences with language by examining three domains-people, places, and things-that define and influence their language input. We highlight how features of each of these three domains could provide useful learning opportunities, as well as how differences in infants' and toddlers' experiences may affect their long-term language skills. However, we ultimately suggest that a full understanding of early environments must move beyond a focus on individual experiences and include the broader systems that shape young children's lives, including both tangible aspects of the environment, such as physical resources or locations, and more hidden factors, such as cultural considerations, community health, or economic constraints.

A developmental model of audio-visual attention (MAVA) for bimodal language learning in infants and robots.

A social individual needs to effectively manage the amount of complex information in his or her environment relative to his or her own purpose to obtain relevant information. This paper presents a neural architecture aiming to reproduce attention mechanisms (alerting/orienting/selecting) that are efficient in humans during audiovisual tasks in robots. We evaluated the system based on its ability to identify relevant sources of information on faces of subjects emitting vowels. We propose a developmental model of audio-visual attention (MAVA) combining Hebbian learning and a competition between saliency maps based on visual movement and audio energy. MAVA effectively combines bottom-up and top-down information to orient the system toward pertinent areas. The system has several advantages, including online and autonomous learning abilities, low computation time and robustness to environmental noise. MAVA outperforms other artificial models for detecting speech sources under various noise conditions.

Companion animals and child development outcomes: longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of a UK birth cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Research into the impact of social relationships on childhood and adolescent health and wellbeing has been largely limited to children's relationships with other humans, while studies into the impact of pet ownership are sparse and have generally not adjusted for potential confounders. This study aimed to investigate the association between pet ownership and a range of developmental outcomes in childhood and adolescence. METHODS: Data were self-reports and direct assessments of approx. 14,000 children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Multivariable regression models adjusting for confounding factors examined associations between developmental outcome measures (emotional health, behavioural development, cognitive development, language development, educational attainment) and concurrent pet ownership, including species, and also longitudinal pet ownership history and pet-interaction where possible. Analyses model numbers using multiple imputation varied from n = 393-8963. RESULTS: In cross-sectional analyses, owning a dog (b = 0.24, [0.06-0.41], p = .004) and owning other/miscellaneous pets (b = 0.18, [0.03-0.33], p = .021) at age 3 were associated with higher prosocial behaviour score. Owning a pet was associated with a higher non-verbal communication score at age 2 (cross-sectional, b = 0.18, [0.04-0.32], p = .014), and a higher language development score at age 5 (cross-sectional, b = 1.01, [0.18-1.83], p = .017). However, pet ownership was associated with lower educational attainment across a number of academic subjects and timepoints, in both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. It was also cross-sectionally linked to hyperactivity at age 3 and conduct problems at age 3 and 11. Furthermore, at age 8, cross-sectional analysis showed that children who owned any pets (OR [95% CI]: 0.85 [0.73-0.98], p= ·026) or cats (0.83, [0.73-0.95], p= ·006) had lower odds of high self-esteem (scholastic competence). CONCLUSIONS: Using a large, well-designed longitudinal study and adjusting for key confounders, we found little evidence of cross-sectional or longitudinal associations between pet ownership and emotional health or cognitive outcomes in children. There may, however, be some cross-sectional and longitudinal association with poorer educational attainment and a positive impact on social interactions as seen through associations with enhanced language development and prosocial behaviour. This study demonstrates the importance of adjustment for confounding variables and suggests that, contrary to popular belief, positive impacts of pet ownership on childhood development may be mainly limited to social behaviour and language development.

Effects of semantic and pragmatic factors on preschool children's negation-triggered inferences on plausible alternatives.

Negation-triggered inferences are universal across human languages. Hearing "This is not X" should logically lead to the inference that all elements other than X constitute possible alternatives. However, not all logically possible alternatives are equally accessible in the real world. To qualify as a plausible alternative, it must share with the negated element as many similarities as possible, and the most plausible one is often from the same taxonomic category as the negated element. The current article reports on two experiments that investigated the development of preschool children's ability to infer plausible alternatives triggered by negation. Experiment 1 showed that in a context where children were required to determine the most plausible alternative to the negated element, the 4- and 5-year-olds, but not the 3-year-olds, exhibited a robust preference for the taxonomic associates. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds considered all the complement set members as equally possible alternatives in a context where they were not explicitly required to evaluate the plausibility of different candidates. Taken together, our findings reveal interesting developmental continuity in preschool children's ability to make inferences about plausible alternatives triggered by negation. We discuss the potential semantic and pragmatic factors that contribute to children's emerging awareness of typical alternatives triggered by negative expressions.

Zipfian distributions facilitate children's learning of novel word-referent mappings.

The word-frequency distributions children hear during language learning are highly skewed (Zipfian). Previous studies suggest that such skewed environments confer a learnability advantage in tasks that require the learner to discover the units that have to be learned, as in word-segmentation or cross-situational learning. This facilitative effect has been attributed to contextual facilitation from high frequency items in learning lower frequency items, and to better learning under the increased predictability (lower entropy) of skewed distributions. Here, we ask whether Zipfian distributions facilitate learning beyond the discovery of units, as expected under the predictability account. We tested children's learning of novel word-referent mappings in a learning task where each mapping was presented in isolation during training, and did not need to be dicovered. We compared learning in a uniform environment to two skewed environments with different entropy levels. Children's learning was overall better in the two skewed environments, even for low frequency items. These results extend the facilitative effect of Zipfian distributions to additional learning tasks and show they can facilitate language learning beyond the discovery of units.