The role of parent and family factors in child language development

这项研究的重点是根据亲子互动数据开发儿童早期语言发展和父母输入的新指标，并使用这些指标来预测儿童在小学早期的语言和识字技能。这项研究的独立阶段(ROO)的目的是：1)建立在授奖指导阶段(K99)学到的技能，以开发和验证新的儿童句法测量方法和来自亲子互动记录的家长输入，2)模拟这些测量在儿童早期的成长，观察父母输入和儿童语言发展之间的关系，以及3)检验这些测量(以及在授奖指导阶段开发的词汇量测量)作为儿童后来的语言和识字技能的预测因素的效用。数据来自两个现有的亲子互动成绩单数据集。第一个数据集来自芝加哥大学的语言发展项目，包括来自不同背景的60个家庭的样本，年龄在14-54个月之间，每4个月进行90分钟的互动。第二个数据集来自哈佛大学的早期Head Start研究，包括108个低收入家庭的样本中14-36个月的孩子每年一次10分钟的互动。两个样本都有额外的数据，使用家长报告和标准化的儿童语言测量来验证新的衡量标准，两个样本都有幼儿园儿童识字技能的测量，用于研究的最后阶段。因此，整个K99/R00研究计划的总体目标是：1)发展儿童早期词汇和句法技能的测量，以捕捉罕见的产出；2)更好地理解特定父母输入措施与儿童语言成长之间的关系；以及3)进一步研究早期口语能力在预测未来识字技能中的作用。

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.