The association between screen media quantity, content, and context and language development.

This study investigates the influence of the quantity, content, and context of screen media use on the language development of 85 Saudi children aged 1 to 3 years. Surveys and weekly event-based diaries were employed to track children's screen use patterns. Language development was assessed using JISH Arabic Communicative Development Inventory (JACDI). Findings indicate that the most significant predictor of expressive and receptive vocabulary in 12- to 16-month-olds was screen media context (as measured by the frequency of interactive joint media engagements). In older children (17- to 36-month-olds), more screen time (as measured by the amount of time spent using screens, the prevalence of background TV at home, and the onset age of screen use) had the highest negative impact on expressive vocabulary and mean length of utterance. These findings support health recommendations on the negative effects of excessive screen time and the positive effects of co-viewing media with children.

Multiword units lead to errors of commission in children's spontaneous production: "What corpus data can tell us?*".

Psycholinguistic research over the past decade has suggested that children's linguistic knowledge includes dedicated representations for frequently-encountered multiword sequences. Important evidence for this comes from studies of children's production: it has been repeatedly demonstrated that children's rate of speech errors is greater for word sequences that are infrequent and thus unfamiliar to them than for those that are frequent. In this study, we investigate whether children's knowledge of multiword sequences can explain a phenomenon that has long represented a key theoretical fault line in the study of language development: errors of subject-auxiliary non-inversion in question production (e.g., "why we can't go outside?*"). In doing so we consider a type of error that has been ignored in discussion of multiword sequences to date. Previous work has focused on errors of omission - an absence of accurate productions for infrequent phrases. However, if children make use of dedicated representations for frequent sequences of words in their productions, we might also expect to see errors of commission - the appearance of frequent phrases in children's speech even when such phrases are not appropriate. Through a series of corpus analyses, we provide the first evidence that the global input frequency of multiword sequences (e.g., "she is going" as it appears in declarative utterances) is a valuable predictor of their errorful appearance (e.g., the uninverted question "what she is going to do?*") in naturalistic speech. This finding, we argue, constitutes powerful evidence that multiword sequences can be represented as linguistic units in their own right.

A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Early Prelinguistic Gesture Development and Its Relationship to Language Development.

Many Western industrialized nations have high levels of ethnic diversity but to date there are very few studies which investigate prelinguistic and early language development in infants from ethnic minority backgrounds. This study tracked the development of infant communicative gestures from 10 to 12 months (n = 59) in three culturally distinct groups in the United Kingdom and measured their relationship, along with maternal utterance frequency and responsiveness, to vocabulary development at 12 and 18 months. No significant differences were found in infant gesture development and maternal responsiveness across the groups, but relationships were identified between gesture, maternal responsiveness, and vocabulary development.

Intention or Attention Before Pointing: Do Infants' Early Holdout Gestures Reflect Evidence of a Declarative Motive?

Gestures are the first signs of intentional communication within prelinguistic infants and can reflect various motives, including a declarative motive to share attention and interest. The ability to use gestures declaratively has been linked to later language development; therefore, it is important to understand the origins of this motive. Previous research has focused on the use of declarative pointing at around 12 months; however, other potential forms of declarative communication, such as holdout gestures, are yet to be studied in detail. The purpose of this study was to examine whether from 10 months, infants use holdouts declaratively. We elicited holdouts from 36 infants and then reacted to these gestures in four different conditions: (1) joint attention: shared interest; (2) infant attention: attended to infant; (3) toy attention: attended to toy; (4) ignore: gesture was not attended to. Infants' behavioral responses were recorded. When the experimenter engaged in joint attention, infants were significantly more likely to display a positive attitude and produced fewer re-engagement attempts. In contrast, the three non-joint attention conditions displayed significantly higher negative attitudes and attempts to re-engage the experimenter. We conclude that infants display declarative communication prior to 12 months, resetting the age at which these more complex skills emerge.

Keeping it simple: the grammatical properties of shared book reading.

The positive effects of shared book reading on vocabulary and reading development are well attested (e.g., Bus, van Ijzendoorn, & Pellegrini, 1995). However, the role of shared book reading in grammatical development remains unclear. In this study, we conducted a construction-based analysis of caregivers' child-directed speech during shared book reading and toy play and compared the grammatical profile of the child-directed speech generated during the two activities. The findings indicate that (a) the child-directed speech generated by shared book reading contains significantly more grammatically rich constructions than child-directed speech generated by toy play, and (b) the grammatical profile of the book itself affects the grammatical profile of the child-directed speech generated by shared book reading.

The interaction of gesture, intonation, and eye-gaze in proto-imperatives.

In the present study we investigate the production of gesture, intonation, and eye-gaze within the proto-imperative behaviour of one English child aged 1;0 to 1;7. The study is based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the three behaviours. The results indicate a shift from reaching gestures to points, and from rising terminal pitch contours to non-rising contours. The analysis also highlights changes in eye-gaze to the co-participant over time. In addition we identify a significant relationship between pitch contour and gesture type within the sample, with points being more closely associated with non-rise intonation than reaching gestures. We suggest that the changes in proto-imperative behaviour signal a shift in the underlying representation of the function from a request for help to a demand for a particular object, and that this development paves the way for the subsequent conventional linguistic expression of the imperative function.

A functional account of verb use in the early stages of English multiword development.

The present study investigates flexibility of verb use in the early stages of English multiword development, and its relationship with patterns attested in the input. The data is taken from a case study of a monolingual English-speaking boy aged 2 ; 5-2 ; 9 and his mother while engaged in daily activities in the home. Data were coded according to Halliday's (1975) functional system. The findings suggest that early multiword verb use is functionally restricted and closely tied to verb use in the input.

The Impact of Interactive Shared Book Reading on Children's Language Skills: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Purpose Research has indicated that interactive shared book reading can support a wide range of early language skills and that children who are read to regularly in the early years learn language faster, enter school with a larger vocabulary, and become more successful readers at school. Despite the large volume of research suggesting interactive shared reading is beneficial for language development, two fundamental issues remain outstanding: whether shared book reading interventions are equally effective (a) for children from all socioeconomic backgrounds and (b) for a range of language skills. Method To address these issues, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to investigate the effects of two 6-week interactive shared reading interventions on a range of language skills in children across the socioeconomic spectrum. One hundred and fifty children aged between 2;6 and 3;0 (years;months) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a pause reading, a dialogic reading, or an active shared reading control condition. Results The findings indicated that the interventions were effective at changing caregiver reading behaviors. However, the interventions did not boost children's language skills over and above the effect of an active reading control condition. There were also no effects of socioeconomic status. Conclusion This randomized controlled trial showed that caregivers from all socioeconomic backgrounds successfully adopted an interactive shared reading style. However, while the interventions were effective at increasing caregivers' use of interactive shared book reading behaviors, this did not have a significant impact on the children's language skills. The findings are discussed in terms of practical implications and future research. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12420539.

Exploring early communicative behaviours: A fine-grained analysis of infant shows and gives.

The ability to share and direct attention is a pre-requisite to later language development and has been predominantly studied through infant pointing. Precursors to pointing, such as showing and giving gestures, may display similar communication skills, yet these gestures are often overlooked. This may be due to difficulty in discerning these gestures in interaction. The current study had two aims; firstly, to identify the micro-behaviours associated with showing and giving gestures in infants under 12 months, in order to ascertain whether these form two discrete communicative behaviours. Secondly, to examine whether these micro-behaviours predicted caregiver responses to these gestures. Fine-grained coding of show and give gestures, their micro-behaviours and caregiver responses was conducted through secondary analysis of naturalistic, triadic interactions between 24 infants, caregivers and a selection of toys. Findings suggested that the micro-behaviours arm position, hand orientation and eye-gaze, were significant predictors of infant gesture type, however only arm positioning was a significant predictor of caregiver response. This suggests that early showing and giving gestures can be classified based on some associated micro-behaviours, however caregiver's responses may not be contingent on these same cues, potentially resulting in difficulty understanding infant gestures. Our findings enhance our understanding of infant communication before 12 months, provide guidance to both researchers and caregivers in the identification of infants' early shows and gives, and highlight the need for greater study of these early pre-linguistic behaviours.

What part of no do children not understand? A usage-based account of multiword negation.

The study investigates the development of English multiword negation, in particular the negation of zero marked verbs (e.g. no sleep, not see, can't reach) from a usage-based perspective. The data was taken from a dense database consisting of the speech of an English-speaking child (Brian) aged 2;3-3;4 (MLU 2.05-3.1) and his mother. The focus of the study was the emergence and usage of negators in the child's and mother's speech (e.g. no, not, can't, won't, don't). Two analyses were conducted: firstly, the emergence and usage of all negators in Brian's speech and in the input were calculated in order to present an overall picture of negator usage across the sample. The findings indicate a gradual and systematic development of negator selection in Brian's speech which follows the trajectory no-not-'nt. The pattern of negator emergence was found to follow the frequency of negators in the input; that is negators used frequently in the input were the first to emerge in the child's speech. Secondly, a more fine-grained analysis of utterances containing negated zero marked verbs (neg V utterances) was conducted on both the child's and mother's speech. In the first instance the development of negator selection for all neg V utterances was calculated. The results indicated the same no-not-'nt cline as attested in the initial analysis. A function-based analysis of neg V utterances was also conducted which indicated that the speed of movement across the no-not-'nt cline varied from one function to the next. A function-based analysis of the input suggested that the speed at which Brian moved across the cline within a particular function could be traced to function-based frequency effects in the input. Thus the findings of the study indicate function-based, input-driven learning which is consistent with the usage-based approach. However the findings also indicate creative learning on the part of the child from the earliest stages of multiword negation.