Cover not available
Part of
Language in Interaction: Studies in honor of Eve V. Clark
Edited by Inbal Arnon, Marisa Casillas, Chigusa Kurumada and Bruno Estigarribia
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 12] 2014
► pp. 29–50

Social environments shape children’s language experiences, strengthening language processing and building vocabulary

| New York University School of Medicine
| New York University School of Medicine

How does language experience influence the development of language skills known to be critical for academic success? In this chapter, we build on a long history of research examining sources of variability in children’s lexical development, and offer a new perspective that focuses on the development of efficiency in real-time language processing. Examining origins of individual differences in language proficiency, we review new research showing that the amount and quality of child-directed speech in infancy contributes to the development of language processing skills, which in turn facilitate vocabulary growth. These findings reveal that early language experience can have cascading effects for later learning and school success.

Published online: 17 July 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.12.06wei
References
Akhtar, N., Dunham, F., & Dunham, P.J
(1991) Directive interactions and early vocabulary development: The role of joint attentional focus. Journal of child language , 18(1), 41–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Akhtar, N., & Tomasello, M
(2000) The social nature of words and word learning. In R.M. Golinkoff & K. Hirsh-Pasek (Eds.), Becoming a word learner: A debate on lexical acquisition . Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Alexander, K., Entwisle, D., & Horsey, C
(1997) From first grade forward: Early foundations of high school dropout. Sociology of Education , 70, 87–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Allopenna, P.D., Magnuson, J.S., & Tanenhaus, M.K
(1998) Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition using eye movements: Evidence for continuous mapping models. Journal of Memory and Language , 38, 419–439. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Altmann, G.T.M., & Kamide, Y
(1999) Incremental interpretation at verbs: Restricting the domain of subsequent reference. Cognition , 73, 247–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnett, J.J
(2008) The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to become less American. The American Psychologist , 63, 602–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnon, I., & Clark, E.V
(2011) Introduction. In I. Arnon & E.V. Clark (Eds.), Experience, variation, and generalization: Learning a first language (TiLAR 7) (pp. 1–11). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, E., Bretherton, I., & Snyder, L
(1988)  From first words to grammar: Individual differences and dissociable mechanisms . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Dale, P.S., & Thal, D
(1995) Individual differences and their implications for theories of language development. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (Eds.), Handbook of Child Language (pp. 96–151). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bradley, R.H., & Corwyn, R.F
(2002) Socioeconomic status and child development. Annual Review of Psychology , 53, 371–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bradley, R.H., Corwyn, R.F., Burchinal, M.R., McAdoo, H.P., & Coll, C.G
(2001) The home environments of children in the United States Part II: Relations with behavioral development through age thirteen. Child Development , 72, 1868–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bradley, R.H., Corwyn, R.F., McAdoo, H.P., & Coll, C.G
(2001) The home environments of children in the United States, Part I: Variations by age, ethnicity, and poverty status. Child Development , 72, 1844–1867. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brent, M.R., & Siskind, J.M
(2001) The role of exposure to isolated words in early vocabulary development. Cognition , 81(2), B33–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brooks-Gunn, J., & Duncan, G.J
(1997) The effects of poverty on children. The Future of Children , 7(2), 55–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J
(1983)  Child’s talk . New York, NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Cameron-Faulkner, T., Lieven, E.V.M., & Tomasello, M
(2003) A construction-based analysis of child directed speech. Cognitive Science , 27, 843–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H., & Clark, E.V
(1977)  Psychology and language . New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Clark, E.V
(1987) The principle of contrast: A constraint on language acquisition. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (Vol. 1, p. 33). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
(2010) Adult offer, word-class, and child uptake in early lexical acquisition. First Language , 30, 250–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V, & Estigarribia, B
(2011) Using speech and gesture to introduce new objects to young children. Gesture , 11, 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V
(1979)  The Ontogenesis of Meaning . Wiesbaden: Athenaion.Google Scholar
(1993)  The Lexicon in Acquisition . Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2003) Acquisition of language: Meanings and forms. In W. Frawley (Ed.), Oxford international encyclopedia of linguistics , 2nd ed. (pp. 19–22). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Conger, R.D., McCarty, J.A., Yang, R.K., Lahey, B.B., & Kropp, J.P
(1984) Perception of child, child-rearing values, and emotional distress as mediating links between environmental stressors and observed maternal behavior. Child Development , 55, 2234–2247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooper, R.P., & Aslin, R.N
(1990) Preference for infant-directed speech in the first month after birth. Child Development , 61, 1584–1595. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durham, R.E., Farkas, G., Hammer, C.S., Tomblin, J.B., & Catts, H.W
(2007) Kindergarten oral language skill: A key variable in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility , 25, 294–305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engle, P.L., & Black, M.M
(2008) The effect of poverty on child development and educational outcomes. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences , 1136, 243–256. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, G.W
(2004) The environment of childhood poverty. American Psychologist , 59, 77–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Child development and the physical environment. Annual Review of Psychology , 57, 423–451. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farkas, G., & Beron, K
(2004) The detailed age trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge: Differences by class and race. Social Science Research , 33, 464–497. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P.S., Reznick, J.S., Bates, E., Thal, D.J., & Pethick, S.J
(1994) Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development , 59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenson, L., Marchman, V.A., Thal, D.J., Dale, P.S., Reznick, J.S., & Bates, E
(2006)  MacArthur-Bates communicative development inventories: User’s guide and technical manual , 2nd ed . Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes.Google Scholar
Fernald, A
(1985) Four-month-old infants prefer to listen to motherese. Infant Behavior and Development , 8, 181–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., & Kuhl, P.K
(1987) Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech. Infant Behavior and Development , 10, 279–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A
(1992) Human maternal vocalizations to infants as biologically relevant signals: An evolutionary perspective. In J.H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 391–428). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
(2010) Getting beyond the “convenience sample” in research on early cognitive development. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 33, 91–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., & Marchman, V.A
(2011) Individual differences in lexical processing at 18 Months predict vocabulary growth in typically developing and late-talking toddlers. Child Development , 83, 203–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., Marchman, V.A., & Weisleder, A
(2013) SES differences in language processing skill and vocabulary are evident at 18 months. Developmental Science , 16, 234–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., Perfors, A., & Marchman, V.A
(2006) Picking up speed in understanding: Speech processing efficiency and vocabulary growth across the 2nd year. Developmental Psychology , 42, 98–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., Pinto, J.P., Swingley, D., Weinberg, A., & McRoberts, G.W
(1998) Rapid gains in speed of verbal processing by infants in the 2nd year. Psychological Science , 9, 228. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernald, A., Zangl, R., Portillo, A.L., & Marchman, V.A
(2008) Looking while listening: Using eye movements to monitor spoken language comprehension by infants and young children. In I.A. Sekerina, E.M. Fernandez, & H. Clahsen (Eds.), Developmental psycholinguistics: On-line methods in children’s language processing (pp. 97–135). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ford, M., Baer, C.T., Xu, D., Yapanel, U., & Gray, S
(2009)  The LENA Language Environment Analysis System: Audio Specifications of the DLP-0121 (pp. 1–8).Google Scholar
Frank, M.C., Tenenbaum, J.B., & Fernald, A
(2013) Social and discourse contributions to the determination of reference in cross-situational word learning. Language, Learning and Development , 9, 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Furrow, D., Nelson, K., & Benedict, H
(1979) Mothers’ speech to children and syntactic development: Some simple relationships. Journal of Child Language , 6, 423–442. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gershkoff-Stowe, L
(2002) Object naming, vocabulary growth, and the development of word retrieval abilities. Journal of Memory and Language , 46, 665–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodman, J.C., McDonough, L., & Brown, N.B
(1998) The role of semantic context and memory in the acquisition of novel nouns. Child Development , 69, 1330–1344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grüter, T., Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A
(2012) Grammatical gender in L2: A production or a real-time processing problem? Second Language Research , 28, 191–215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guillelmon, D., & Grosjean, F
(2001) The gender marking effect in spoken word recognition: The case of bilinguals. Memory & cognition , 29, 503–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hart, B.M., & Risley, T.R
(1995)  Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children . Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes.Google Scholar
Henderson, L., Weighall, A., Brown, H., & Gaskell, G
(2013) Online lexical competition during spoken word recognition and word learning in children and adults. Child Development , 84(5), 1668–1685. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E
(2003) The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child Development , 74, 1368–1378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E., & Naigles, L.R
(2002) How children use input to acquire a lexicon. Child Development , 73, 418–433. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoff-Ginsberg, E
(1991) Mother-child conversation in different social classes and communicative settings. Child Development , 62, 782–796. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1998) The relation of birth order and socioeconomic status to children’s language experience and language development. Applied Psycholinguistics , 19, 603–629. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hollingshead, A.B
(1975)  Four factor index of social status. Unpublished manuscript , Yale University.Google Scholar
Hurtado, N., Marchman, V.A., & Fernald, A
(2007) Spoken word recognition by Latino children learning Spanish as their first language. Journal of Child Language , 33, 227–249. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) Does input influence uptake? Links between maternal talk, processing speed and vocabulary size in Spanish-learning children. Developmental Science , 11, F31–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huston, A.C., Mcloyd, V.C., & Garcia Coll, C
(1994) Children and poverty: Issues in contemporary research. Child Development , 65, 275–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M., Waterfall, H.R., Vevea, J.L., & Hedges, L.V
(2007) The varieties of speech to young children. Developmental Psychology , 43, 1062–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Waterfall, H., Vasilyeva, M., Vevea, J., & Hedges, L.V
(2010) Sources of variability in children’s language growth. Cognitive Psychology , 61, 343–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuhl, P.K., Andruski, J.E., Chistovich, I.A., Chistovich, L.A., Kozhevnikova, E.V., Ryskina, V.L., Stolyarova, E.I et al. (
1997) Cross-language analysis of phonetic units in language addressed to infants. Science , 277, 684–686. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A
(2007) Young children learning Spanish make rapid use of grammatical gender in spoken word recognition. Psychological Science , 18, 193–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lonigan, C.J., Burgess, S.R., & Anthony, J.L
(2000) Development of emergent literacy and early reading skills in preschool children: Evidence from a latent variable longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology , 36, 596–613. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marchman, V.A., & Fernald, A
(2008) Speed of word recognition and vocabulary knowledge in infancy predict cognitive and language outcomes in later childhood. Developmental Science , 11, F9–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matarazzo, J.D
(1972)  Wechsler’s Measurement and Appraisal of Adult Intelligence , 5th ed . Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins.Google Scholar
McLoyd, V.C
(1990) The impact of economic hardship on black families and children: psychological distress, parenting, and socioemotional development. Child Development , 61, 311–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mesman, J., Van IJzendoorn, M.H., & Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J
(2012) Unequal in opportunity, equal in process: Parental sensitivity promotes positive child development in ethnic minority families. Child Development Perspectives , 6, 239–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murray, A., Johnson, J., & Peters, J
(1990) Fine-tuning of utterance length to preverbal infants: Effects on later language development. Journal of Child Language , 17, 511–525. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oller, D.K., Niyogi, P., Gray, S., Richards, J.A, Gilkerson, J., Xu, D., Yapanel, U et al. (
2010) Automated vocal analysis of naturalistic recordings from children with autism, language delay, and typical development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 107, 13354–13359.Google Scholar
Phillips, J.R
(1973) Syntax and vocabulary of mother’s speech to young children: Age and sex comparisons. Child Development , 44(1), 182–185. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Phillips, M
(2011) Parenting, time use, and disparities in academic outcomes. In G.J. Duncan & R.J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 207–228). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Raikes, H., Pan, B.A., Luze, G., Tamis-LeMonda, C.S., Brooks-Gunn, J., Constantine, J., Tarullo, L.B et al. (
2006) Mother-child bookreading in low-income families: Correlates and outcomes during the first three years of life. Child Development , 77(4), 924–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ramey, G., & Ramey, V.A
(2009)  The rug rat race . Cambridge, MA. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rowe, M.L., & Goldin-Meadow, S
(2009) Differences in early gesture explain SES disparities in child vocabulary size at school entry. Science , 323, 951–953. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rowe, M.L., Raudenbush, S.W., & Goldin-Meadow, S
(2012) The pace of vocabulary growth helps predict later vocabulary skill. Child Development , 83, 508–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saffran, J.R., Newport, E.L., & Aslin, R.N
(1996) Word segmentation: The fole of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language , 35, 606–621. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Senechal, M
(2006) The misunderstood giant: On the predictive role of early vocabulary to future reading. In D.K. Dickinson & S.B. Neuman (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research , Vol. 2 (pp. 173–184). New York, NY: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Shneidman, L.A., Arroyo, M.E., Levine, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S
(2013) What counts as effective input for word learning? Journal of Child Language , 40, 672–686. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shneidman, L.A., & Goldin-Meadow, S
(2012) Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: How important is directed speech? Developmental Science , 15, 659–673. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soderstrom, M
(2007) Beyond babytalk: Re-evaluating the nature and content of speech input to preverbal infants. Developmental Review , 27, 501–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swingley, D., Pinto, J.P., & Fernald, A
(1999) Continuous processing in word recognition at 24 months. Cognition , 71, 73–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M., & Farrar, M.J
(1986) Joint attention and early language. Child Development , 57, 1454–1463. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M., & Todd, J
(1983) Joint attention and lexical acquisition style. First Language , 4, 197–211. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tramontana, M.G., Hooper, S.R., & Selzer, S.C
(1988) Research on the preschool prediction of later academic achievement: A review. Developmental Review , 8, 89–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vance, B., West, K., & Kutsick, K
(1989) Prediction of Wechsler pre-school and primary scale of intelligence IQ scores for pre-school children using the PPVT Test-R and the expressive one word picture vocabulary test. Journal of Clinical Psychology , 45, 642–644. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, D., Greenwood, C., Hart, B.M., & Carta, J
(1994) Prediction of school outcomes based on early language production and socioeconomic factors. Child Development , 65, 606–621. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weisleder, A., & Fernald, A
2013). Talking to children matters: Early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary. Psychological Science . 24, 2143–52. DOI logo
Xu, D., Yapanel, U., Gray, S., Gilkerson, J., Richards, J., & Hansen, J
(2008) Signal processing for young child speech language development. Workshop on Child, Computer and Interaction . Chania, Crete, Greece.Google Scholar
Zangl, R., & Fernald, A
(2007) Increasing flexibility in children’s online processing of grammatical and nonce determiners in fluent speech. Language Learning and Development , 3(3), 199–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 7 other publications

Flores, Andrew Z., Jessica L. Montag & Jon A. Willits
2023. Using known words to learn more words: A distributional model of child vocabulary acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language 132 ► pp. 104446 ff. DOI logo
Rowe, Meredith L. & Adriana Weisleder
2020. Language Development in Context. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology 2:1 ► pp. 201 ff. DOI logo
Sabol, Terri J., Teresa Eckrich Sommer, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale & Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
2021. Intergenerational Economic Mobility for Low-Income Parents and Their Children: A Dual Developmental Science Framework. Annual Review of Psychology 72:1 ► pp. 265 ff. DOI logo
Shavlik, Margaret, Pamela E. Davis‐Kean, Jessica F. Schwab & Amy E. Booth
2021. Early word‐learning skills: A missing link in understanding the vocabulary gap?. Developmental Science 24:2 DOI logo
Singh, Leher, Qiqi Cheng & Wei‐Jun Jean Yeung
2023. Effects of socio‐economic status on infant native and non‐native phoneme discrimination. Developmental Science 26:4 DOI logo
Singh, Leher, Wei‐Jun Jean Yeung, Qiqi Cheng & Elisa Y‐T Heng
2023. The home literacy environment mediates effects of socio‐economic status on infant vocabulary development. Developmental Science 26:4 DOI logo
Tamis‐LeMonda, Catherine S., Stephanie Custode, Yana Kuchirko, Kelly Escobar & Tiffany Lo
2019. Routine Language: Speech Directed to Infants During Home Activities. Child Development 90:6 ► pp. 2135 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 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.