Routine Language: Speech Directed to Infants During Home Activities

Everyday activities are replete with contextual cues for infants to exploit in the service of learning words. Nelson's (1985) script theory guided the hypothesis that infants participate in a set of predictable activities over the course of a day that provide them with opportunities to hear uni...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 2019-11, Vol.90 (6), p.2135-2152
Main Authors: Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S., Custode, Stephanie, Kuchirko, Yana, Escobar, Kelly, Lo, Tiffany
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activities
Context Effect
Cues
Discourse Analysis
EMPIRICAL ARTICLES
Everyday life
Family Environment
First born
Food
Grooming
Hygiene
Infants
Language
Language Acquisition
Linguistic Input
Meaning
Mothers
Parent Child Relationship
Pragmatics
Script theory
Semantics
Speech
Speech Communication
Story Reading
Time use
Transcription
Video Technology
Vocabulary Development
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Everyday activities are replete with contextual cues for infants to exploit in the service of learning words. Nelson's (1985) script theory guided the hypothesis that infants participate in a set of predictable activities over the course of a day that provide them with opportunities to hear unique language functions and forms. Mothers and their firstborn 13-month-old infants (N = 40) were video-recorded during everyday activities at home. Transcriptions and coding of mothers' speech to infants—time-locked to activities of feeding, grooming, booksharing, object play, and transition—revealed that the amount, diversity, pragmatic functions, and semantic content of maternal language systematically differed by activity. The activities of everyday life shape language inputs to infants in ways that highlight word meaning.
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.1111/cdev.13089