Department of Linguistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
J Child Lang. 2024 Mar;51(2):359-384. doi: 10.1017/S0305000923000077. Epub 2023 Feb 7.
Parental input is considered a key predictor of language achievement during the first years of life, yet relatively few studies have assessed its effects on longer-term outcomes. We assess the effects of parental quantity of speech, use of parentese (the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech), and turn-taking in infancy, on child language at 5 years. Using a longitudinal dataset of daylong LENA recordings collected with the same group of English-speaking infants (N=44) at 6, 10, 14, 18, 24 months and then again at 5 years, we demonstrate that parents' (defined as stable and high) use of parentese in infancy was a potent predictor of lexical diversity, mean length of utterance, and frequency of conversational turn-taking between children and adults at Kindergarten entry. Together, these findings highlight the potential importance of a high-quality language learning environment in infancy for success at the start of formal schooling.
父母的输入被认为是儿童生命最初几年语言习得的关键预测因素，但很少有研究评估其对长期结果的影响。我们评估了父母在婴儿期的言语数量、使用儿语（声学上夸张、清晰、音高较高的言语）和轮流发言对儿童 5 岁时语言的影响。我们使用一个纵向数据集，该数据集是通过对同一组讲英语的婴儿（N=44）在 6、10、14、18、24 个月时进行全天 LENA 录音，并在 5 岁时再次进行录音收集的，结果表明，父母在婴儿期（定义为稳定和较高）使用儿语是词汇多样性、话语平均长度和儿童与成人在幼儿园开始时对话轮流发言频率的有力预测因素。这些发现共同强调了婴儿期高质量语言学习环境对正式入学成功的潜在重要性。
