About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 11. Language, Communication

Abstract

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Previous research on early language development often uses corpus analyses to understand early language input, revealing how frequently and when children hear specific words. Recent studies have shifted towards utilizing approaches on language input in a more structural perspective, examining how heard words co-occur and how parental behaviors are coordinated with their speech. Researchers using head-mounted eye trackers to record moment-to-moment object looking during parent-child object play further documented that parents support co-occurrences between child’s looking at the referent (e.g., CUP) while hearing the name (“cup”). While structural measures have been increasingly applied to monolingual datasets to inform the microstructure of early language input, we know relatively little about input structure among bilingual parents. Early language learning in bilingual households presents potentially different word-meaning structures as one meaning (e.g., CUP) can correspond to multiple labels (e.g., cup, taza) one in each language. In the present study, we used the network analysis approach to investigate the effect of language learning context on parental language input, including (1) word co-occurrence and (2) word-referent mapping, in an interactive play context with their infants. We observed 50 parent-infant dyads: 25 from English-only households (M=11.16 months, SD = 3.77, 8 males) and 25 from Spanish-English bilingual households (M= 13.11, SD = 4.50, 14 males). Each parent and infant wore a head-mounted eye tracker during a five-minute object play session involving eight objects. Video data from these observations were annotated and transcribed for (1) speech at word and phrase levels and (2) identifying the moments where each heard noun was paired with the moment where the referent was looked at by the infants. We hypothesize that differences will emerge in the frequency of word co-occurrences and how words co-occur together in speech will be influenced by the infant’s language background and gaze behaviors. Specifically, we hypothesize that compared to monolingual parents, parent speech from bilingual parents will exhibit fewer word co-occurrences during moments when the infant is looking at the labeled object to assist them with navigating the complexity of their language environment with multiple languages. To address our research questions, we will conduct a mixed-effects model to compare the effects of language background (monolingual and bilingual) and infant attention status (indicating whether the infant is looking at the referent that parent labels). The preliminary analyses do not indicate significant differences between monolingual and bilingual parents in the overall structure of their speech input, as measured by word co-occurrence patterns. Moreover, the preliminary results suggest that parental speech in both language groups is dependent upon the infant’s word-referent mapping; when infants are not looking at the labeled object, parent speech is less complex in terms of fewer interrelated words and less clustered speech compared to moments when infants look at labeled objects. Together, these results will highlight the importance of multimodal experiences to contextualize early speech input for infants from different language backgrounds and provide insights into how language backgrounds may impact early language experiences.

Author information

Author	Role
Christina Diaz Griep, University of Houston	Presenting author
Eliana Colunga, Ph.D., University of Colorado Boulder	Non-presenting author
Kevin Brown, Ph.D., Oregon State University	Non-presenting author
David Francis, Ph.D., University of Houston	Non-presenting author
Hanako Yoshida, Ph.D., Univeristy of Houston	Non-presenting author

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