Global Secrets of Early Language Learning
Dr. Thomas H. Agrait,I.E.- Lean Enterprise Consulting
Business Process Transformation(BPT) Coach, Author and Cognitive Neuroscientist. Post-Doc-Neuroscience @ MIT
Neuroscience News
Summary: A new study, involving an extensive international sample of 1,001 children across 43 languages, offers groundbreaking insights into how infants and toddlers learn language.
The research utilized day-long audio recordings and machine learning analysis. Key findings indicate that age, clinical factors, and the amount of adult speech children hear are the primary drivers of language development, challenging previous beliefs about the influence of gender, multilingualism, and socioeconomic.
This comprehensive study provides a more nuanced understanding of language acquisition in early childhood.
Key Facts:
1 The study analyzed language development in children from 12 countries, speaking 43 languages.
2 Major predictors of language development include age, clinical factors, and exposure to adult speech, not gender or socioeconomic status.
3 For every 100 adult vocalizations heard per hour, children produced 27 more vocalizations, with this effect increasing with age.
Source: Harvard
Elika Bergelson, associate professor of psychology at Harvard University, studies how infants and toddlers learn language from the world around them. The developmental psychologist specifically strives to parse the various theories that account for the onset and eventual mastery of language comprehension and production.
Bergelson’s latest paper, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents a more global approach to developing and testing such theories.
The study was able to simultaneously consider many variables that are usually looked at separately while also considering how big their effects were. Credit: Neuroscience News
Written with Alejandrina Cristia at the école normale supérieure, PSL University and 11 others, the paper is based on an extremely large sample of two- to 48-month olds. Day-long audio recordings captured the babbling and baby talk of 1,001 children representing 12 countries and 43 languages. Analysis was completed with the help of machine learning.
Results show that the main predictors of language development are age, clinical factors such as prematurity or dyslexia, and how much speech children receive from the world around them. In contrast to previous research, no effects were found related to gender, multilingualism, or socioeconomics.
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The study was able to simultaneously consider many variables that are usually looked at separately while also considering how big their effects were.
“Notably, it wasn’t just child factors like age or risk for language delay that mattered, but a key environmental factor too: how much speech children heard from adults,” Bergelson said.
“For every 100 adult vocalizations children heard per hour, they produced 27 more vocalizations themselves, and this effect grew with age.”
The work also touches on well-worn critiques of low-income parents and caregivers.
“There’s been much debate and discussion in the literature in recent years about how socioeconomic status does or doesn’t link to language input and language output,” noted Bergelson.
“We looked in many, many, many different ways … In no form did we ever find evidence that moms with more education had kids who produced more speech in these tens of thousands of hours of recordings from daily life.”
Funding: Financial support for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.
About this neurodevelopment and language research news
Author: Christy DeSmith?Source: Harvard?Contact: Christy DeSmith – Harvard?Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.?“Everyday language input and production in 1,001 children from six continents” by Alejandrina Cristia et al. PNAS
Abstract
Everyday language input and production in 1,001 children from six continents
Language is a universal human ability, acquired readily by young children, who otherwise struggle with many basics of survival. And yet, language ability is variable across individuals. Naturalistic and experimental observations suggest that children’s linguistic skills vary with factors like socioeconomic status and children’s gender.