The aim of the study is to analyze prelexical speech development in young children with a different socio-economic
status (SES): children from low SES backgrounds (lowSES) are compared with mid-to-high SES (mhSES) children. Timing of the onset
of babbling and the consonantal development in consonant-vowel (cv) syllables are investigated. Result show that lowSES children
reach the babbling onset milestone significantly later than mhSES children. In addition, they use different consonant types in
their cv-syllables: they use more glides, but fewer stops, nasals, fricatives, and liquids. These early differences between
children of different backgrounds seem to be in line with the literature on SES differences later on in life.
Albert, R. R., Schwade, J. A., & Goldstein, M. H. (2018). The social functions of babbling: acoustic and contextual characteristics that facilitate maternal responsiveness. Developmental science, 21(5), e12641.
Baayen, H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data. A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effect models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 671, 1–48.
Betancourt, L. M., Brodsky, N. L., & Hurt, H. (2015). Socioeconomic (SES) differences in language are evident in female infants at 7 months of age. Early Human Development, 91(12), 719–724.
Booij, G. (1995). The phonology of Dutch. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Brown, R. (1958). Words and things. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.
Cartmill, E. A., Armstrong, B. F., Gleitman, L. R., Goldin-Meadow, S., Medina, T. N., & Trueswell, J. C. (2013). Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary 3 years later. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 1101, 11278–11283.
Chapman, K. L., Hardin-Jones, M., Schulte, J., & Halter, K. A. (2001). Vocal development of 9-month-old babies with cleft palate. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 441, 1268–1283.
De Boysson-Bardies, B., & Vihman, M. (1991). Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages. Language, 67(2), 297–319.
Eilers, R. E., Oller, D. K., Levine, S. L., Basinger, D. L., Lynch, M. P., & Urbano, R. (1993). The role of prematurity and socioeconomic status in the onset of canonical babbling in infants. Infant Behavior & Development, 161, 297–315.
Elbers, L., & Ton, J. (1985). Play pen monologues: The interplay of words and babbles in the first words period. Journal of Child Language, 121, 551–565.
Faes, J., Gillis, J., & Gillis, S. (2016). Phonemic accuracy development in children with cochlear implants up to five years of age by using Levenshtein distance. Journal of Communication Disorders, 591, 40–58.
Fasolo, M., Majorano, M., & D’Odorico, L. (2008). Babbling and first words in children with slow expressive development. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 22(2), 83–94.
Fernald, A., Marchman, V. A., & Weisleder, A. (2013). SES differences in language processing skill and vocabulary are evident at 18 months. Developmental Science, 16(2), 234–248.
Fish, M., & Pinkerman, B. (2003). Language skills in low-SES rural Appalachian children: normative development and individual differences, infancy to preschool. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 231, 539–565.
Goldstein, M., King, A., & West, M. (2003). Social interaction shapes babbling: Testing parallels between birdsong and speech. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(13), 8030–8035.
Goldstein, M., & Schwade, J. (2008). Social feedback to infants’ babbling facilitates rapid phonological learning. Psychological Science, 19(5), 515–523.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1992). American parenting of language-learning children: Persisting differences in family-child interactions observed in natural home environments. Developmental Psychology, 281, 1096–1105.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, Maryland: Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1999). The social world of learning to talk. Baltimore, Maryland: Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3. American Educator, Spring 2003, 4–9.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., Owen, M. T., Golinkoff, R. M., Pace, A., Yust, P. K., Suma, K. (2015). The contribution of early communication quality to low-income children’s language success. Psychological Science, 26(7), 1071–1083.
Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child development, 74(5), 1368–1378.
Hoff, E. (2013). Interpreting the early language trajectories of children from low-SES and language minority homes: Implications for closing achievement gaps. Developmental Psychology, 491, 4–14.
Hoff, E., & Naigles, L. (2002). How children use input to acquire a lexicon. Child Development, 731, 418–433.
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1998). The relation of birth order and socioeconomic status to children’s language experience and language development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 191, 603–629.
Hollingshead, A. A. (1975). Four-factor index of social status. Unpublished manuscript. Yale University, New Haven, CT.
Hox, J. (2008). Multilevel analysis: Techniques and applications. New York; London: Psychology Press.
Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27(2), 236–248.
Huttenlocher, J., Waterfall, H., Vasilyeva, M., Vevea, J., & Hedges, L. V. (2010). Sources of variability in children’s language growth. Cognitive Psychology, 611, 343–365.
Jednoróg, K., Altarelli, I., Monzalvo, K., Fluss, J., Dubois, J., Billard, C., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., & Ramus, F. (2012). The influence of socioeconomic status on children’s brain structure. PLOS ONE, 7(10) 1371/journal.pone.0042486.
Johnson, E. K., & Siedl, A. H. (2009). At 11 months, prosody still outranks statistics. Developmental science, 12(1), 131–141.
Keren-Portnoy, T., Majorano, M., & Vihman, M. M. (2009). From phonetics to phonology: The emergence of first words in Italian. Journal of Child Language, 361, 235–267.
Koopmans-Van Beinum, F., Clement, C. J., & Van den Dikkenberg-Pot, I. (2001). Babbling and the lack of auditory speech perception: A matter of coordination?Developmental Science, 41, 61–70.
Koopmans-Van Beinum, F., & Van der Stelt, J. (1986). Early stages in the development of speech movements. In B. Lindblom, & R. Zetterström (Eds.), Precursors of early speech (pp. 37–50). New York: Stockton.
Lang, S., Bartl-Pokorny, K., Pokorny, F., Garrido, D., Mani, N., Fox-Boyer, A., Zhang, D., & Marschik, P. (2019). Canonical babbling: A marker for earlier identification of late detected developmental disorders?Current Developmental Disorders Reports, 61, 111–118.
Leffel, K., & Suskind, D. (2013). Parent-directed approaches to enrich the early language environments of children living in poverty. Seminars in Speech and Language, 341, 267–278.
Locke, J. L. (1980). The prediction of child speech errors: Implications for a theory of acquisition. In G. H. Yeni-Komshian, J. F. Kavanagh, & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.), Child Phonology (Vol. 11, pp.193–209). New York: Academic Press.
Locke, J. L. (1983). Phonological acquisition and change. New York: Academic Press.
Locke, J. L. (1989). Babbling and early speech: Continuity and individual differences. First Language, 91, 191–201.
Lohmander, A., Holm, K., Eriksson, S., & Lieberman, M. (2017). Observation method identifies that a lack of canonical babbling can indicate future speech and language problems. Acta Paediatrics, 1061, 935–943.
Lynch, M. P., Oller, D. K., Steffens, M. L., Levine, S. L., Basinger, D. L., & Umbel, V. (1995). Onset of speech-like vocalizations in infants with Down syndrome. American Journal of Mental Retardation, 1001, 68–86.
MacNeilage, P., & Davis, B. (2000). On the origin of internal structure of word forms. Science, 2881, 527–531.
MacNeilage, P., Davis, B., Kinney, A., & Matyear, C. (2000). The motor core of speech: A comparison of serial organization patterns in infants and languages. Child Development, 71(1), 153–163.
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
McGillion, M., Herbert, J., Pine, J., Vihman, M., DePaolis, R., Keren-Portnoy, T., & Matthews, D. (2017). What paves the way to conventional language? The predictive values of babble, pointing, and socioeconomic status. Child Development, 881, 156–166.
Molemans, I. (2011). A longitudinal investigation of aspects of the prelexical speech repertoire in young children acquiring Dutch: Normally hearing children and hearing-impaired children with a cochlear implant. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
Molemans, I., Van den Berg, R., Van Severen, L., & Gillis, S. (2012). How to measure the onset of babbling reliably?Journal of Child Language, 39(3), 523–552.
Nakazima, S. (1975). Phonemicization and symbolization in language development. In E. H. Lenneberg, & E. Lenneberg (Eds.), Foundations of language development, a multidisciplinary approach (Vol. 11, pp. 181–187). New York: Academic Press.
Nathani, S., Ertmer, D. J., & Stark, R. E. (2006). Assessing vocal development in infants and toddlers. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 20(5), 351–369.
Noble, K. G., Houston, S. M., Kan, E., & Sowell, E. R. (2012). Neural correlates of socioeconomic status in the developing human brain. Developmental Science, 151, 516–527.
Oller, D. K. (1980). The emergence of the sounds of speech in infancy. In G. H. Yeni-Komshian, J. F. Kavanagh, & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.), Child phonology. Volume 1: production (pp. 93–112). New York: Academic Press.
Oller, D. K. (2000). The emergence of the speech capacity. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (1982). Similarities of babbling in Spanish- and English-learning babies. Journal of Child Language, 91, 565–577.
Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (1988). The role of audition in infant babbling. Child Development, 591, 441–449.
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Basinger, D. L., Steffens, M. L., & Urbano, R. (1995). Extreme poverty and the development of precursors to the speech capacity. First Language, 151, 167–187.
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Bull, D., & Carney, A. (1985). Pre-speech vocalizations of a deaf infant: A comparison with normal metaphonological development. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 281, 47–63.
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Neal, A. R., & Schwartz, H. (1999). Precursors to speech in infancy: The prediction of speech and language disorders. Journal of Communication Disorders, 321, 223–245.
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Neal, A. R., & Cobo-Lewis, A. B. (1998). Late onset canonical babbling: A possible early marker of abnormal development. American Journal of Mental Retardation, 1031, 249–263.
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Steffens, M. L., Lynch, M. L., & Urbano, R. (1994). Speech-like vocalizations in infancy: An evaluation of potential risk factors. Journal of Child Language, 211, 33–58.
Pan, B. A., Rowe, M. L., Singer, J. D., & Snow, C. E. (2005). Maternal correlates of growth in toddler vocabulary production in low-income families. Child Development, 761, 763–782.
Quené, H., & Van den Bergh, H. (2004). On multi-level modeling of data from repeated measures designs: A tutorial. Speech Communication, 431, 103–121.
Richels, C., Johnson, K., Walden, T., & Gonture, E. (2013). Socioeconomic status, parental education, vocabulary and language skills of children who stutter. Journal of Communication Disorders, 461, 361–374.
Roug, L., Landberg, I., & Lundberg, L. J. (1989). Phonetic development in early infancy: A study of four Swedish children during the first eighteen months of life. Journal of Child Language, 161, 1–40.
Rowe, M. L. (2008). Child-directed speech: Relation to socioeconomic status, knowledge of child development and child vocabulary skill. Journal of Child Language, 351, 185–205.
Rowe, M. L. (2012). A longitudinal investigation of the role of quantity and quality of child-directed speech in vocabulary development. Child Development, 831, 1762–1774.
Rowe, M. L. (2018). Understanding socioeconomic differences in parents’ speech to children. Child Development Perspectives, 121, 122–127.
Sarsour, K., Sheridan, M., Jutte, D., Nuru-Jeter, A., Hinshaw, S., & Boyce, T. (2011). Family socioeconomic status and child executive functions: The roles of language, home environment, and single parenthood. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 171, 120–132.
Song, L., Spier, E. T., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2014). Reciprocal influences between maternal language and children’s language and cognitive development in low-income families. Journal of Child Language, 411, 305–326.
Sparks, A., & Reese, E. (2012). From reminiscing to reading: Home contributions to children’s developing language and literacy in low-income families. First Language, 331, 89–109.
Stark, R. E. (1980). Stages of speech development in the first year of life. In G. H. Yeni-Komshian, J. F. Kavanagh, & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.), Child phonology. Volume 1: production (pp. 73–92). New York: Academic Press.
Stoel-Gammon, C. (1989). Prespeech and early speech development of two late talkers. First Language, 91, 207–224.
Stoel-Gammon, C. (1992). Prelinguistic vocal development: Measurement and predictions. In C. A. Ferguson, L. Menn, & C. Stoel-Gammon (Eds.), Phonological development: Models, research, implications (pp. 439–456). Maryland: York Press.
Stoel-Gammon, C. (1998). Role of babbling and phonology in early linguistic development. In A. M. Wetherby, S. F. Warren, & J. Reichle (Eds.), Transitions in prelinguistic communication (pp. 87–110). Baltimore, Md: Paul H. Brookes.
Stoel-Gammon, C., & Cooper, J. (1984). Patterns of early lexical and phonological development. Journal of Child Language, 111, 247–271.
Suskind, D. L., Leffel, K. R., Graf, E., Hernandez, M. W., Gunderson, E. A., Sapolich, S. G., Suskind, E., Leininger, L., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Levine, S. C. (2016). A parent-directed language intervention for children of low socioeconomic status: A randomized controlled pilot study. Journal of Child Language, 431, 366–406.
Swingley, D. (2005). 11-month-olds’ knowledge of how familiar words sound. Developmental Science, 8(5), 432–443.
Taumoepeau, M., & Reese, E. (2013). Maternal reminiscing, elaborative talk, and children’s theory of mind: An intervention study. First Language, 331, 388–410.
Thevenin, D. M., Eilers, R. E., Oller, D. K., & Lavoie, L. (1985). Where’s the drift in babbling drift? A cross-linguistic study. Applied Psycholinguistics, 61, 3–15.
Tomalski, P., Moore, D. G., Ribeiro, H., Axelsson, E. L., Murphy, E., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Johnson, M. H., & Kushnerenko, E. (2013). Socioeconomic status and functional brain development-associations in early infancy. Developmental Science, 161, 676–687.
Tomasello, M., & Stahl, D. (2004). Sampling children’s spontaneous speech: How much is enough?Journal of Child Language, 311, 101–121.
Van den Berg, R. (2012). Syllables inside out: A longitudinal study of the development of syllable types in toddlers acquiring Dutch: A comparison between hearing impaired children with a cochlear implant and normally hearing children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
Van Severen, L. (2012). A large-scale longitudinal survey of consonant development in toddlers’ spontaneous speech. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
Vanormelingen, L. (2016). Are you talking to me? Child-directed speech and language development: hearing children of different socio-economic statuses and deaf children with a cochlear implant. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
Vanormelingen, L., & Gillis, S. (2016). The influence of socio-economic status on mothers’ volubility and responsiveness in a monolingual Dutch-speaking sample. First Language, 36(2), 140–156.
Velleman, S. L., & Vihman, M. M. (2002). The optimal initial state. Rutgers Optimality Archive, 552–1002.
Vihman, M. (2019). Phonological templates in development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vihman, M., Macken, M. A., Miller, R., Simmons, H., & Miller, J. (1985). From babbling to speech: A re-assessment of the continuity issue. Language 61(2), 397–445.
Weisleder, A., & Fernald, A. (2013). Talking to children matters: Early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2143–2152.
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior & Development, 71, 49–63.
Wild, K. T., Betancourt, L. M., Brodsky, N. L., & Hurt, H. (2013). The effect of socioeconomic status on the language outcome of preterm infants at toddler age. Early Human Development, 89(9), 743–746.
Yazejian, N., Bryant, D. M., Hans, S., Horm, D., St. Clair, L., File, N. and Burchinal, M. (2017). Child and parenting outcomes after 1 year of Educare. Child Development, 881, 1671–1688.
Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Bergelson, Elika
2024. Supporting Early Language by Supporting Systemic Solutions. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Long, Helen L., Gordon Ramsay, Edina R. Bene, Pumpki Lei Su, Hyunjoo Yoo, Cheryl Klaiman, Stormi L Pulver, Shana Richardson, Moira L. Pileggi, Natalie Brane & D. Kimbrough Oller
2024. Canonical babbling trajectories across the first year of life in autism and typical development. Autism
DER NEDERLANDEN, Sarah J., Jeannette C. SCHAEFFER, Hedwig H. J. A. VAN BAKEL & Evelien DIRKS
2023. Socio-economic status and other potential risk factors for language development in the first year of life. Journal of Child Language► pp. 1 ff.
Gannon, Charlotte, Russell A. Hill & Adriano R. Lameira
2023. Open plains are not a level playing field for hominid consonant-like versus vowel-like calls. Scientific Reports 13:1
ter Haar, Sita M., Ahana A. Fernandez, Maya Gratier, Mirjam Knörnschild, Claartje Levelt, Roger K. Moore, Michiel Vellema, Xiaoqin Wang & D. Kimbrough Oller
2021. Cross-species parallels in babbling: animals and algorithms. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:1836
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.