Children's experience, understanding, and use of adjectives across the socioeconomic spectrum.

孩子们需要对形容词和其他形式的描述性语言（如副词）有扎实的掌握，才能成功地进行交流。在学校里，形容词被明确地作为一种培养孩子叙事能力和语言复杂性的方式来教授。形容词对于描述和区分是必不可少的。他们可以增加词汇量，这对孩子后来的成就有很大的预测作用，也就是说，有良好语言技能的孩子在学校有更好的机会，更好的机会进入高等教育，成年后有更好的经济技能（Blanden, 2006）。然而，孩子们直到四岁左右才能灵活地使用形容词，与其他开放词汇课程的习得相比，这是一个较晚的阶段。尽管形容词重要性明显，出现时间也相对较晚，但很少受到研究者的关注。至关重要的是，形容词可能会给有语言迟缓或有语言迟缓风险的儿童带来特殊的挑战（Ricks & Alt, 2016），但言语和语言治疗通常并不关注语言的这一方面。这个项目将改变我们对幼儿如何体验形容词的理解，以及他们如何在自己的发展语言中使用这些输入。通过在社会背景下研究儿童的心理语言加工，我们将揭示社会经济背景如何影响发展机制，整合之前保持独立的研究领域。一个综合的方法对于充分理解孩子在学习形容词时面临的挑战是至关重要的。我们的研究结果将使我们能够确定在家庭和学校提高儿童语言能力的最佳方法，并跨越社会经济范围。在一系列实验中，我将调查儿童听到的描述性语言，使用最先进的眼球追踪方法测量3岁儿童对一系列形容词的理解，开发一种创新的方法，可以在实验室级别测量儿童对照顾者自然语言的反应，并评估随机控制的基于家庭的语言干预的有效性。我将与社区团体、从业者和国家组织合作，利用这些发现共同制作可访问的材料，以促进来自不同背景的儿童的语言学习。儿童的语言经验和技能因其社会经济背景的不同而差异很大。来自英国收入最低的五分之一家庭的孩子在入学时的词汇发展可能比富裕的同龄人落后19个月（Sutton Trust, 2012），并且在社会经济条件较差的家庭中长大的孩子早期出现语言问题的风险增加已经得到了充分的证明。虽然社会经济因素对语言发展的其他方面的影响是明确的，但它们对形容词习得的影响尚未得到探讨。对于来自低社会经济背景的孩子来说，形容词带来的一些挑战可能不成比例，他们的单词学习和句子理解困难更有可能阻碍他们处理描述性语言的能力。更积极的是，研究表明，照顾者对孩子使用的语言会有所帮助：他们使用的形容词越多，在句子中使用得越明确，孩子对形容词的使用就越有效。研究结果将对语言发展研究具有重要的理论和方法意义。它们还将产生重大的社会影响。与专家顾问委员会一起，我将利用我的研究成果，共同为家庭、从业者和政策制定者提供有针对性的建议，这些建议与面临描述性语言挑战的儿童一起工作。这个项目也为我的发展提供了许多机会，使我成为国际语言习得领域的领先研究人员，并为项目团队的职业发展提供了机会。

Children need a solid command of adjectives and other forms of descriptive language (e.g. adverbs) to communicate successfully. At school, adjectives are explicitly taught as a way for children to develop their narrative abilities and language complexity. Adjectives are essential for describing and differentiating. They can increase vocabulary, which is highly predictive of children's subsequent achievement, i.e. children who arrive at school with good language skills have better chances at school, better chances of entering higher education, and better economic skills in adulthood (Blanden, 2006). However, children are unable to use adjectives flexibly until around four years of age, a late stage compared to the acquisition of other open word classes. Despite their clear importance and relatively late appearance, adjectives have received little attention by researchers. Crucially, adjectives may present particular challenges to children with or at risk of language delay (Ricks & Alt, 2016), yet speech and language therapy has not typically focused on this aspect of language. This project will transform our understanding of how young children experience adjectives and how they use that input in their own developing speech. By examining children's psycholinguistic processing within its social context, we will reveal how socioeconomic background affects developmental mechanisms, integrating research strands previously kept separate. An integrated approach is vital for fully understanding the challenges children face when acquiring adjectives. Our findings will enable us to identify the very best ways of boosting children's language at home and at school, across the socioeconomic spectrum. In a series of experiments, I will survey the descriptive language that children hear, measure 3-year-olds' comprehension of a range of adjectives using state of the art eyetracking methods, develop an innovative method which enables laboratory-grade measurement of children's language processing in response to their caregivers' naturalistic speech, and evaluate the effectiveness of a randomised controlled family-based language intervention. With community groups, practitioners, and national organisations, I will use the findings to co-produce accessible materials for promoting language in children from a range of backgrounds. Children's language experience and skills vary widely as a function of their socioeconomic background. Children from the lowest UK income quintile can be up to 19 months behind their more affluent peers in vocabulary development on school entry (Sutton Trust, 2012), and the increased risk of early language problems for children growing up in socioeconomically disadvantaged families has been well documented. Although the impact of socioeconomic factors on other aspects of language development is clear, their effect on adjective acquisition has not yet been explored. Some of the challenges posed by adjectives may be disproportionate for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, whose word learning and sentence comprehension difficulties are more likely to hinder their ability to handle descriptive language. More positively, research suggests that the language that caregivers use with their children can help: the more adjectives they use, and the more explicitly they use them in sentences, the more effective their children's use of adjectives will be. Findings will have important theoretical and methodological implications for research in language development. They will also have significant societal impact. With an expert advisory board, I will use my research findings to co-produce targeted recommendations to families, practitioners, and policymakers working with children facing challenges with descriptive language. The project also offers numerous opportunities for my development as a leading international researcher in language acquisition, and for the project team in their career development.