Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK; Psychology in Education Research Centre, Department of Education, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2022 Feb;214:105305. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105305. Epub 2021 Oct 13.
Symbols are a hallmark of human communication, and a key question is how children's emerging language skills relate to their ability to comprehend symbols. In particular, receptive and expressive vocabulary may have related, but distinct, roles across early development. In a longitudinal study of late talking (LT) and typically developing (TD) children, we differentiated the extent to which expressive and receptive language skills predicted symbolic understanding as reflected in picture comprehension and how language skills inter-related with social skills. LT and TD children were tested on a picture comprehension task that manipulated the availability of verbal labels at 2.0-2.4 years and 3.5-3.9 years of age. Although all children improved in accuracy over time as expected, TD children exhibited an advantage over LT children, despite both groups using verbal labels to inform their mapping of picture-object relationships. Receptive and expressive vocabulary also differed in their contribution at different ages; receptive vocabulary predicted performance at ∼2.0 years of age, and expressive vocabulary predicted performance at ∼3.5 years of age. Task performance at 3.5 years was predicted by earlier receptive vocabulary, but this effect was largely mediated by concurrent expressive vocabulary. Social ability across the whole sample at ∼2.0 years also predicted and mediated the effect of receptive vocabulary on concurrent task performance. These findings suggest that LT children may have delays in developing picture comprehension over time and also that social ability and language skills may differentially relate to symbolic understanding at key moments across development.
符号是人类交流的标志，一个关键问题是儿童新兴的语言技能如何与其理解符号的能力相关。特别是，接受性和表达性词汇可能在早期发展中具有相关但不同的作用。在一项对晚说话 (LT) 和典型发展 (TD) 儿童的纵向研究中，我们区分了表达性和接受性语言技能在多大程度上预测了象征性理解，这反映在图片理解中，以及语言技能如何与社会技能相互关联。LT 和 TD 儿童在 2.0-2.4 岁和 3.5-3.9 岁时接受了图片理解任务的测试，该任务操纵了口头标签的可用性。虽然所有儿童的准确性都随着时间的推移而提高，但与 LT 儿童相比，TD 儿童表现出优势，尽管两组儿童都使用口头标签来告知他们对图片-物体关系的映射。接受性和表达性词汇在不同年龄的贡献也不同；接受性词汇预测了大约 2.0 岁时的表现，而表达性词汇预测了大约 3.5 岁时的表现。3.5 岁时的任务表现由早期的接受性词汇预测，但这种影响主要是由同期的表达性词汇介导的。整个样本在大约 2.0 岁时的社会能力也预测和介导了接受性词汇对同期任务表现的影响。这些发现表明，LT 儿童可能随着时间的推移在发展图片理解方面存在延迟，并且社会能力和语言技能可能在发展的关键时刻以不同的方式与象征性理解相关。
