Collaborative Research: The temporal structure of infants' everyday behaviors: Language and play interactions in the home environment

在婴儿期和幼儿期，儿童在说出他们语言的声音和单词方面表现出令人印象深刻的进步。 重要的是，每个婴儿在早期的语言技能上有很大的差异，这种差异对入学准备，学业成绩，甚至以后的健康和幸福都很重要。因此，了解早期互动的特点，有助于语言学习是至关重要的科学，实践和社会。到目前为止，大多数关于婴儿语言发展的研究都集中在父母对婴儿说的话的数量和种类上。这个项目基于“越多不一定越好”的前提，研究了日常互动的一个潜在的关键特征：婴儿和母亲的行为如何随着时间的推移而展开。该项目是第一个测试行为的时间结构（例如，在休息时间之后的闲聊时间;在一个早上的物体游戏中的几次来回对话）有助于婴儿声音和单词产生的复杂性。从这个项目中获得的基础知识有望激发语言发展的新理论，并为测量人类日常行为的时间特性提供新的工具。该项目是基于转录，编码和分析的视频记录语料库的400多个小时的婴儿-母亲的家庭活动在一个不同的样本超过150个家庭。目的1描述了婴儿的发声和母亲的言语在日常家庭活动的时间结构。目的2测试婴儿和母亲的声音行为之间的关联，在每时每刻和延长的时间尺度。目的3：探讨婴儿客体游戏的时间结构与婴儿发声和母亲言语的时间结构之间的关系。目的4探讨婴儿的发声，母亲的讲话，和婴儿的物体一起玩的时间结构如何涉及到婴儿的声音和文字的声音生产的复杂性。对时间结构的关注改变了早期语言发展的研究，将重点从基于简短实验室任务的行为快照转移到研究家庭环境中活动期间行为如何展开。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Children show impressive gains in saying the sounds and words of their language(s) during infancy and toddlerhood. Importantly, individual infants differ enormously in their early language skills, and such differences matter for school readiness, academic achievement, and even later health and wellbeing. Thus, understanding the features of early interactions that contribute to language learning is critical to science, practice, and society at large. To date, most research on infant language development focuses on the amount and variety of words that parents direct to their babies. This project, grounded in the premise that more is not necessarily better, investigates a potentially critical feature of everyday interactions: How behaviors of infant and mother unfold over time. The project is the first to test how the temporal structure of behaviors (e.g., chatty moments followed by downtime; several bouts of back-and-forth conversations during a morning’s object play episodes) contribute to the sophistication of infants’ sound and word production. The foundational knowledge gained from this project promises to inspire new theories of language development and provide new tools for measuring temporal properties of everyday human behaviors. The project is based on the transcription, coding, and analysis of a videorecorded corpus of 400+ hours of infant-mother home activities in a diverse sample of over 150 families. Aim 1 describes the temporal structure of infants’ vocalizations and mothers’ speech during everyday home activities. Aim 2 tests associations between infant and mother vocal behaviors at moment-to-moment and extended time scales. Aim 3 tests how the temporal structure of infant object play relates to the temporal structure of infants’ vocalizations and mothers’ speech. Aim 4 examines how the temporal structures of infants’ vocalizations, mothers’ speech, and infant object play together relate to the sophistication of infants’ vocal productions of sounds and words. The focus on temporal structure transforms the study of early language development by shifting emphasis from snapshots of behavior based on brief lab tasks to studying how behaviors unfold during activities in the home environment.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.