Optimal input for language development: Tailor nurture to nature

Abstract

In acquiring a native language, the input children receive, to an unneglectable extent, shapes the rate of acquisition and the ultimate achievement. This in turn has cascading effects on many aspects of later development, including but not limited to language. Providing optimal input for early language development, therefore, is of major interest to scientists, parents, and educators. This thought paper highlights two less‐discussed factors in the formula of optimal input—the balance between input quantity and quality, and the timing of input provision. Correspondingly, two points are made: first, given significant limitations in processing abilities in early development, increased quality is sometimes achieved via decreased quantity; second, endowed with a sleep‐mediated memory consolidation system, input provision should consider “sleep” as a reference point in timing. Both points boil down to a central theme that nurture (i.e., input) should be tailored to suit nature; in particular, optimal input should take best advantage of the endowments provided by our nature (e.g., sleep to consolidate memory) and to circumvent the limitations set by nature (e.g., processing limitations).

Talking With Each Other : The Role of Language Environment Factors on Early Language Development From Different Perspectives

“…Quantity usually refers to the number of words, tokens, or utterances spoken (i.e., how many; Anderson et al, 2021) whereas quality is used in relation to some form of quality character of language and can be divided into three different dimensions: interactive (e.g., responsiveness, discussions of the child's interests), linguistic (e.g., the complexity of the input either lexically or grammatically), and conceptual (e.g., the content of the conversation; Rowe & Snow, 2020). Instead of considering quantity and quality separately and in an attempt to ascertain which is the most important, others emphasize the balance between them (He, 2022). That is, rather than it being simply that more of one is better, it could be that a more advantageous quality of language environment is attained if quantity is decreased (He, 2022).…”

“…Instead of considering quantity and quality separately and in an attempt to ascertain which is the most important, others emphasize the balance between them (He, 2022). That is, rather than it being simply that more of one is better, it could be that a more advantageous quality of language environment is attained if quantity is decreased (He, 2022). See Figure 1 for an illustration of how each language environment factor examined in this thesis can be interpreted.…”

Parental tuning of language input to autistic and nonspectrum children

“…However, language input is not directly represented in children's minds but is instead filtered through their own cognitive skills and linguistic knowledge. Their intake of the input is therefore limited by their own abilities (e.g., Trueswell and Gleitman, 2007;Kidd et al, 2013;Lidz and Gagliardi, 2014;Omaki and Lidz, 2015;He and Arunachalam, 2017;Arunachalam and Luyster, 2018;He, 2022). If, for example, parents produce language input that is too complex for the child's current abilities, the child may not benefit from it (e.g., He, 2022).…”

“…Their intake of the input is therefore limited by their own abilities (e.g., Trueswell and Gleitman, 2007;Kidd et al, 2013;Lidz and Gagliardi, 2014;Omaki and Lidz, 2015;He and Arunachalam, 2017;Arunachalam and Luyster, 2018;He, 2022). If, for example, parents produce language input that is too complex for the child's current abilities, the child may not benefit from it (e.g., He, 2022). Therefore, to best support intake, input must be tuned to children's language abilities.…”