Developmental linguistics

Speaker: Anna Sosa (Northern Arizona University)

Title: Association of the type of toy used during play with the quantity and quality of parent-infant communication

Abstract: Young children’s language ability is in part determined by the child’s early language environment. The quantity and quality of language input received from caregivers during the first few years is associated with a child’s language accomplishments and early advantages or disadvantages can have long-lasting implications for later academic success. Beyond characteristics inherent to the families themselves (e.g., socio-economic status, parent educational level, etc.), little is known about everyday factors that promote high quality communicative interactions between parents and their young children.  The purpose of the study I will discuss in this talk was to investigate whether the type of toy used during play influences the parent-infant communicative interaction.  The study was a controlled experiment in a natural environment looking at parent-infant communication during play with 3 different toy sets (books, traditional toys, and electronic toys). A volunteer sample of 26 parent-infant (aged 10- 16 months) dyads participated.  The main outcome measures were number of adult words produced, number of child vocalizations, number of conversational turns, number of parent verbal responses to child utterances, and number of words produced by parents in three different semantic categories (content specific words) per minute during play sessions. Results indicated that toy type influenced all outcome measures.  In general, play with electronic toys was associated with decreased quantity and quality of language input compared to play with books or traditional toys.  I will present study results in detail and discuss implications for professionals working with families of young children.

Contact

Dr Barbora Skarabela