A gesture training for low-income parents to improve child vocabulary development

项目总结 为低收入父母提供手势训练以促进儿童语言发展 社会经济地位(SES)一直与儿童早期语言发展密切相关， 尤其是词汇的发展。平均而言，受教育程度更高、条件更优越的父母会有孩子 在幼儿时期词汇技能更强，词汇增长更快，比受教育程度低和 优势父母(Hart&Risley，1995；Hoff，2003)。儿童在词汇方面的差异是明显的 早在蹒跚学步的几年，加宽到5岁，然后趋于平稳，导致了很大的平均SES 幼儿园和一年级的词汇差距(Farkas&Beron，2004)。这些早期的差异已经有很长时间了- 持久的影响因为研究表明，二、三、四年级阅读和阅读中的SES差距 数学技能，可以用孩子们带到幼儿园的口语能力来解释 (Durham et.等人，2007年)。此外，对目前的提案来说，最重要的是幼儿园的社会经济地位差距 词汇可以追溯到儿童早期的非语言(即手势)交流 亲子互动。具体地说，在14个月大的时候，来自SES较高家庭的孩子会做手势 这种手势的使用与他们后来的词汇技能有关(Rowe&Goldin- 草甸)。此外，儿童手势在早期的SES差异可以用数量和质量来解释 父母的手势。因此，到了14个月大的时候，孩子已经或多或少地学会了打手势 在亲子互动期间，这种早期的非语言交流使他们处于或高或低的水平 儿童早期词汇增长的轨迹(Rowe，RaudenBush&Goldin-Meadow，2012)。 这个拟议项目的目的是开发和试行手势训练干预计划 有低收入的父母。重点放在日常交流手势上，主要是指着。一个家- 将在9个月大的儿童父母中制定和实施基于教育的干预措施。 家庭将被纵向跟踪，直到18个月大的孩子，并多次访问该家庭 确定：1)是否有可能提高父母提供的指点手势的数量和质量 言语儿童，2)这种干预是否增加了儿童的手势使用，以及3)是否 干预促进了儿童早期词汇的发展。这项初步研究的分析将比较 将干预组(n=20)与对照组(n=20)进行比较，以确定干预是否影响 在有组织的自由游戏观察过程中，父母与儿童的交流手势是否 干预通过父母的交流输入影响儿童的手势或词汇发展。这项工作是 根据NICHD母亲和儿童研究中心的使命，将在 为旨在改善低社会经济地位家庭幼儿早期环境的政策提供信息；以及 可能有助于防止SES成就差距得到证实。 好了！

PROJECT SUMMARY A gesture training for low-income parents to improve child language development Socioeconomic status (SES) is consistently strongly related to children's early language development, particularly vocabulary development. On average, more educated and advantaged parents have children with greater vocabulary skills and faster vocabulary growth during early childhood than less educated and advantaged parents (Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003). SES differences in children's vocabulary are evident as early as the toddler years, widen until age 5, and then level off, resulting in a large average SES vocabulary gap in kindergarten and first grade (Farkas & Beron, 2004). These early differences have long- lasting ramifications as research shows that the SES gap in second, third, and fourth grade reading and mathematics skills, can be explained by the oral language abilities children bring with them to kindergarten (Durham et. al., 2007). Further, and most important for the current proposal, the SES gap in kindergarten vocabulary can be traced all the way back to children's early nonverbal (i.e. gesture) communication during parent-child interactions. Specifically, at age 14 months, children from higher-SES families are gesturing more than their lower-SES peers, and this gesture use is related to later vocabulary skill (Rowe & Goldin- Meadow). Further, the early SES differences in child gesture can be explained by the quantity and quality of parent gesture. Thus, by 14 months of age, children are already socialized to gesture more or less during parent-child interactions and this early nonverbal communication sets them on a higher or lower trajectory in their vocabulary growth across early childhood (Rowe, Raudenbush & Goldin-Meadow, 2012). The purpose of this proposed project is to develop and pilot test a gesture training intervention program with low-income parents. The focus is on everyday communicative gestures, primarily pointing. A home- based educational intervention will be developed and implemented with parents at child age 9-months. Families will be followed longitudinally up to child age 18-months with several visits to the home to determine: 1) if it is possible to boost the quantity and quality of pointing gestures parents offer their pre- verbal children, 2) whether this intervention increases children's gesture use, and 3) whether this intervention increases children's early vocabulary development. Analyses for this pilot study will compare the intervention (n=20) group to a control group (n=20) to determine whether the intervention affects parental communicative gestures with children during structured free-play observations and whether the intervention affects child gesture or vocabulary development via parent communicative input. This work is in line with the mission of the NICHD Center for Research for Mothers and Children, will be instrumental in informing policies designed to improve the early environments of young children from low-SES families, and may potentially help prevent the SES achievement gap from substantiating. !