Learning mechanisms influencing infants’ early socio-pragmatic abilities

Abstract

The fact that early language ability varies as a function of socio-economic circumstances (SEC) and predicts later educational inequalities has prompted the development of early interventions to support child language development. To date, the outcomes of such interventions have generally been assessed after children begin talking by measuring vocabulary and grammar. However, infants participate in communicative interactions before they start to speak, with these interactions predicting later language abilities. We therefore assessed whether an early communication-focused intervention can influence interactions prior to the onset of spoken language in the first wave of an ongoing RCT. When their infants were around 6 months, caregivers were randomly assigned to either a language intervention or an active control intervention focused on physical health. When infants turned 12 months, home videos (N = 133, 68 active control intervention, 65 language intervention) were analysed for overall caregiver responsive linguistic interaction, infant pre-linguistic acts, and caregiver responses to these acts. We also examined whether these variables varied by SEC, and whether any intervention effects were moderated by SEC. Pre-registered analyses indicated the intervention led to increases in overall caregiver linguistic responsiveness, infant communicative behaviours, and caregiver semantically contingent responses to infant communicative acts. Findings indicate that early interventions can promote caregiver responsiveness from very early stages of development, particularly for families experiencing social disadvantage. This promotes the development of the infant pre-linguistic communicative abilities thought to form a basis for later language development.