Parentese in infancy predicts 5-year language complexity and conversational turns

Ramírez, Naja Ferjan; Weiss, Yael; Sheth, Kaveri K; Kuhl, Patricia K.

doi:10.1017/s0305000923000077

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…In a recently proposed model, Rowe and Snow (2020) conceptualized the features of high-quality caregiver input that facilitate language development in terms of three dimensions: linguistic, interactive, and conceptual. Parentese has been demonstrated to maximize all three of these dimensions (Ferjan Ramírez et al, 2023). Linguistically, key features of parentese are its distinct segmental and prosodic features, which are adjusted in real time and based on the child’s responses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The parents who received coaching produced a larger proportion of their utterances in parentese, and their children showed higher vocabulary and enhanced turn-taking in infancy and toddlerhood (Ferjan Ramírez et al, 2019, 2020; Huber et al, 2023). Follow-up studies that tracked the same children longitudinally demonstrated positive associations between parentese in infancy, and sentence length, lexical diversity, turn-taking, as well as emergent literacy skills at Kindergarten entry (Ferjan Ramírez et al, 2023; Weiss et al, 2022). Together, this supports the idea that caregiver use of parentese in infancy may serve as a stepping stone to language, catalyzing positive developmental cascades, and supporting robust language development that goes beyond infancy and toddlerhood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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What do parents really think? Knowledge, beliefs, and self-awareness of parentese in relation to its use in daylong recordings

Ferjan Ramírez

2023

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This study focuses on parental use of parentese: the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech produced by adults across cultures when they address infants. While previous research shows that parentese enhances language learning and processing, it is still unclear what drives the variability in the amount of parental parentese use. We report on the development of a survey related to parental beliefs, knowledge, and self-awareness of parentese, and the cross-validation of this survey with daylong recordings in which parental parentese was measured through observation. Forty mother–father (18 monolingual English and 22 bilingual Spanish/English) U.S. families with infants between 3 and 24 months of age participated. Scores on the parentese questionnaire showed wide variability, suggesting that many parents were unsure about the effects of parentese on infant language development, and had limited self-awareness of their own parentese use. Almost half of the parents claimed that they talked to their child ‘like an adult’, and a similar number disagreed with the claim that parentese can support language learning. Our observational assessment of parentese demonstrated that all mothers and all fathers used parentese when talking to their infants; mothers in an average of 81% and fathers in an average of 69% of child-directed segments. Importantly, maternal parentese knowledge/beliefs scores, as well as their self-reported parentese use, were significantly positively correlated with observed parentese use; these relations were not significant for fathers. These results demonstrate that maternal and paternal links between beliefs, self-awareness, and behavior may be distinct, emphasizing the importance of studying all caregivers and using observational methodologies. More broadly, a thorough understanding of the factors that shape infants’ language environments contributes to theories of language acquisition and can aid in intervention design.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

What do parents really think? Knowledge, beliefs, and self-awareness of parentese in relation to its use in daylong recordings

Ferjan Ramírez

2023

First Language

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Language environment and early language production in Slovenian infants: An exploratory study using daylong recordings

Ferjan Ramírez,

Marjanovič Umek,

Fekonja

2024

Infancy

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Daylong recordings provide an ecologically valid option for analyzing language input, and have become a central method for studying child language development. However, the vast majority of this work has been conducted in North America. We harnessed a unique collection of daylong recordings from Slovenian infants (age: 16–30 months, N = 40, 18 girls), and focus our attention on manually annotated measures of parentese (infant‐directed speech with a higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation), conversational turns, infant words, and word combinations. Measures from daylong recordings showed large variation, but were comparable to previous studies with North American samples. Infants heard almost twice as much speech and parentese from mothers compared to fathers, but there were no differences in language input to boys and girls. Positive associations were found between the social‐interactional features of language input (parentese, turn‐taking) and infants' concurrent language production. Measures of child speech from daylong recordings were positively correlated with measures obtained through the Slovenian MacArthur‐Bates Communicative Development Inventory. These results support the notion that the social‐interactional features of parental language input are the foundation of infants' language skills, even in an environment where infants spend much of their waking hours in childcare settings, as they do in Slovenia.

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Effects of cultural dynamics on everyday acoustic environments

Ramírez-Esparza,

Jiang,

García-Sierra

et al. 2024

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Differences in acoustic environments have previously been linked to socioeconomic status (SES). However, it is crucial to acknowledge that cultural values can also play a significant role in shaping acoustic environments. The goal of this study was to investigate if social behaviors related to cultural heritage and SES could help us understand how Latinx and European college students in the U.S. have different acoustic environments. College students were given digital recorders to record their daily acoustic environments for two days. These recordings were used to (1) evaluate nearfield noise levels in their natural surroundings and (2) quantify the percentage of time participants spent on behavioral collectivistic activities such as socializing and interacting with others. Behavioral collectivism was examined as a mediator between cultural heritage, SES, and nearfield noise levels. Findings revealed that both SES and cultural heritage were associated with nearfield noise levels. However, behavioral collectivism mediated the relationship between culture and nearfield noise levels. These findings show that collectivist cultural norms significantly relate to Latinx' daily noise levels. The implications of these findings for public health and health inequities included promoting equitable auditory well-being and better knowledge of socio-cultural settings.

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Parentese in infancy predicts 5-year language complexity and conversational turns

Cited by 6 publications

References 102 publications

What do parents really think? Knowledge, beliefs, and self-awareness of parentese in relation to its use in daylong recordings

What do parents really think? Knowledge, beliefs, and self-awareness of parentese in relation to its use in daylong recordings

Language environment and early language production in Slovenian infants: An exploratory study using daylong recordings

Effects of cultural dynamics on everyday acoustic environments

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