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

在婴儿期和学步期，儿童在说他们语言的声音和单词方面表现出令人印象深刻的进步(S)。重要的是，每个婴儿早期的语言技能差异很大，这种差异对上学准备、学业成绩，甚至后来的健康和幸福都有重要影响。因此，了解有助于语言学习的早期互动的特征对科学、实践和整个社会都至关重要。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指向婴儿的单词的数量和种类上。这个项目基于这样一个前提，即越多不一定越好，研究日常互动的一个潜在关键特征：婴儿和母亲的行为是如何随着时间的推移而展开的。该项目首次测试了行为的时间结构(例如，闲聊之后的停机时间；早上物体游戏场景中的几轮来回对话)如何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启发语言发展的新理论，并为测量日常人类行为的时间特性提供新的工具。该项目基于对超过150个家庭的不同样本中400多个小时的母婴家庭活动的视频语料库的转录、编码和分析。目的1描述日常家庭活动中婴儿发声和母亲发声的时间结构。目的2检验婴儿和母亲在时刻表和扩展时间尺度上发声行为的相关性。目的3检验婴幼儿物体游戏的时间结构与婴幼儿发声和母亲言语的时间结构之间的关系。目的4研究婴儿发声、母亲言语和婴儿物体游戏的时间结构如何与婴儿发声和发声的复杂程度有关。对时间结构的关注转变了对早期语言发展的研究，将重点从基于简单实验室任务的行为快照转移到研究行为如何在家庭环境中展开。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.