Picture book reading: Investigating a key source of linguistic input for early language development

在许多家庭、学校和日托场所，父母和其他照顾者让年幼的孩子接触绘本。本项目探讨家庭绘本阅读习惯的差异如何解释儿童语言发展的个体差异。这个项目还包括测试更多的词汇和语法多样性（绘本阅读的一个特点）是否能促进单词学习。绘本的文本与典型的儿童导向语言的不同之处可能对语言学习很重要。例如，绘本文本经常描述不存在于此时此地的人和实体，并且具有与典型言语不同的叙事结构。此外，绘本文本比典型语音包含更多的独特词汇和更多的复句。这意味着经常阅读绘本的孩子可能会听到他们在其他情况下可能听不到的单词和句子。这个项目将帮助研究人员了解语言发展的轨迹和促进儿童语言发展的因素。这个项目的结果将对旨在提高早期语言成绩的项目产生影响。这个项目测试了一个假设，即儿童导向语言和文本之间的分布差异可能解释了阅读绘本所观察到的好处。考虑到绘本文本中包含的语言与典型的儿童导向语言之间的系统差异，接触绘本可能为儿童提供宝贵的语言学习机会。为了验证这一假设，该项目首先旨在更好地理解在真实家庭的自然环境中阅读绘本是什么样子的。将对家长和主要照顾者进行关于家庭阅读实践的大规模调查。此外，儿童和看护者将在阅读绘本的过程中被记录下来，以收集看护者与儿童互动的数据。接下来，将给家庭提供简单或复杂的绘本，让他们在家阅读，以操纵孩子们所经历的语言输入。这种对语言输入的操纵将为研究人员提供一种方法，通过这种方法可以研究绘本阅读对词汇和其他语言结果的纵向影响。鉴于绘本文本的特点是上下文和句法的多样性比典型的语音更大，本项目将证明这些属性是否使绘本成为儿童学习单词的好工具或坏工具。该项目的研究结果将促进对语言输入在语言发展中的作用的理解，并将阐明绘本对语言学习轨迹的贡献方式。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In many homes, schools, and daycare settings, parents and other caregivers engage young children with picture books. This project examines how differences in home picture book reading practices accounts for individual differences in children's language development. This project also involves testing whether greater lexical and grammatical diversity (a characteristic of picture book reading) promote word learning. The text of picture books differs from typical child-directed speech in ways that may be important for language learning. For example, picture book text often describes people and entities not present in the here-and-now, and is characterized by narrative structures unlike typical speech. In addition, the text of picture books contains more unique words and a greater number of complex sentences than typical speech. This means that children who are often read picture books may hear words and sentences that they may not otherwise hear. This project will help researchers understand trajectories of language development and factors that contribute to language development for children. The results of this project will have implications for programs that aim to improve early language outcomes.This project tests the hypothesis that the distributional differences between child-directed speech and texts may explain the observed benefits of picture book reading. Given the systematic differences between the language contained in picture book text and typical child-directed speech, exposure to picture books may provide children with valuable language learning opportunities. To test this hypothesis, this project first aims to better understand what picture book reading looks like in naturalistic contexts in real homes. Large scale surveys about home reading practices will be administered to parents and primary caregivers. In addition, children and caregivers will be recorded during picture book reading in order to collect data about caregiver-child interactions. Next, families will be given sets of simple or complex picture books to read at home, in order to manipulate the language input that children experience. This manipulation of the language input will provide a means by which the researchers can examine the longitudinal effects of picture book reading on vocabulary and other language outcomes. Given that picture book text is characterized by greater contextual and syntactic diversity than typical speech, this project will demonstrate whether these attributes make picture books a particularly good or poor word-learning tool for children. The results of this project will advance the understanding of the role language input plays in language development, and will clarify the manner in which picture books contribute to language learning trajectories.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.