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

Abstract

A crucial aspect of children's language development is the language environment, and parental and home environment factors are particularly important during the early years. The overarching aim of this thesis was to investigate typically developed young children's language development in relation to parental and family home language environment factors. Specifically, language development was assessed in Swedish-learning children at 9 and 25 months of age. Different research perspectives and methods were used to gain a more nuanced understanding of the contributing factors to children's language development.This thesis is based on four papers that each cover different factors in the language environment. Papers I-III are based within developmental psychology and Paper IV is based within discursive psychology. Paper I investigated the relation between several language environment factors in the home and children's language development at 9 months. The results showed that linguistic input and child vocalization were significantly and positively associated with language development. This was not the case for interaction or electronic sound. Paper II investigated parental mental state talk (MST) and its relation to children's MST and general language development at 25 months. Parental MST was not significantly associated with either children's MST nor their general language development. Paper III investigated the relation between parental mind-mindedness (MM) when children were 9 months old and child language development at 9 and 25 months old. Parental MM was not significantly associated with language development at either 9 or 25 months. Paper IV examined in detail how children used MST, specifically the word vill 'want' in parent-child interactions. The results showed that children's use of the word vill 'want' accomplished several social actions, such as requesting, rejecting, and accounting for their own behavior.The results suggest a complex interaction between language environment factors and language development that can be examined from different research perspectives. This thesis has been a first step for developmental psychology and discursive psychology to talk with each other and describe the contributions of each perspective to the phenomena of language development. How the relation between language environment and language development is researched depends on the theoretical approach and further research is needed in collaboration between approaches to gain as rich knowledge about child language as possible.