The role of parent and family factors in child language development

该研究的重点是开发儿童早期语言发展和父母从亲子互动数据中输入的新措施，并使用这些措施来预测儿童在小学早期的语言和读写技能。本研究独立阶段（ROO）的目的是：1)基于在奖项指导阶段（K99）所学到的技能，从亲子互动的文本中开发和验证儿童语法和父母输入的新测量方法；2)在儿童早期观察父母输入与儿童语言发展之间的关系，在这些测量方法中建立模型；3)检验这些衡量标准（以及在奖项指导阶段开发的词汇衡量标准）作为预测儿童后期语言和读写技能的效用。数据来自两个现有的亲子交互记录数据集。第一个数据集来自芝加哥大学的语言发展项目，由60个不同背景的家庭样本中14-54个月大的孩子每4个月90分钟的互动组成。第二个数据集来自哈佛大学的“早期开端”研究，包括108个低收入家庭样本中14-36个月大的孩子每年一次10分钟的互动。两个样本都有额外的数据，使用家长报告和儿童语言的标准化测量来验证新的测量方法，两个样本都有儿童在幼儿园的识字技能测量，用于研究的最后阶段。因此，整个K99/R00研究项目的总体目标是：1)开发儿童早期词汇和句法技能的测量方法，以捕捉生产的稀缺性；2)更好地理解特定的父母输入措施与儿童语言成长之间的关系；3)进一步研究早期口语能力在预测以后读写能力方面的作用。

The proposed research focuses on developing new measures of early child langugae development and parent input from parent-child interaction data, and using those measures to predict children's language and literacy skills in the early elementary years. The purpose of the independent phase (ROO) of this research is to: 1) build on the skills learned during the mentored phase of the award (K99) to develop and validate new measures of child syntax and parent input from transcripts of parent-child interaction, 2) to model growth in these measures during the eariy childhood period looking at relations between parent input and child language development, and 3) to examine the utility of these measures (as well as the vocabulary measures developed during the mentored phase of the award) as predictors of chidlren's later language and literacy skills. The data come from two existing datasets of transcripts from parent-child interaction. The first dataset is from the Language Development Project at the University of Chicago and consists of 90-minute interactions every 4 months between child ages 14-54 months in a sample of 60 families from diverse backgrounds. The second dataset is from the Early Head Start study at Harvard University and consists of 10-minute interactions once a year between child ages 14-36 months in a sample of 108 low-income families. Both samples have additional data using parent report and standardized measures of child language for validating new measures, and both samples have measures of children's literacy skills at kindergarten for use in the final phase of the research. Thus, the overall goals of the entire K99/R00 research program are to: 1) develop measures of children's vocabulary and syntactic skills during eariy childhood that capture rarity of production, 2) better understand the relation between specific parent input measures and child language growth, and 3) further the research on the role of eariy oral language abilities in predicting later literacy skills.