A Longitudinal Study of Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Influence Factors on First Language Acquisition

Author(s):

Eveline Pinstock(presenting / submitting)Satyam Antonio Schramm

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

31. LEd – Network on Language and Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

31 SES 11 B, Children's Language Development, Influencing Factors and Pedagogies

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

17:15-18:45

Room:

W4.20

Chair:

Ingrid Gogolin

Contribution

Early child language acquisition seems to be an important predictor for later language outcome and achievements in school (Hohm, Jennen-Steinmetz, Schmidt & Laucht, 2007). Therefore, specific knowledge about language development can help formulating indication for early intervention, which could prevent the development of language impairment.

Since an enormous interindividual variability can be seen as the norm in early child language acquisition, the concept of a “typical child” is problematic (Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Bates, Thal, Pethick, Tomasello, Mervis, & Stiles, 1994). In German, Szagun, Stumper & Schramm (2009) provided representative norms for lexical and grammatical development of children at the age of 18 to 30 months in a cross-sectional study.

Early vocabulary and grammar development are closely linked (Dale, Price, Bishop, & Plomin, 2003; Fenson et al., 1994). A limited vocabulary or an unusual development pattern at an early age are possible indicators of later language problems (Reilly, Wake, Ukoumunne, Bavin, Prior, Cini, Conway, Eadie & Bretherton 2010; Doil, 2002).

In addition to early linguistic abilities being possible predictors to further language acquisition, there are non-linguistic influence factors on language development that need to be considered.

In various studies, socioeconomic status has been identified as an influence factor (Ulrich, Penke, Berg, Lüdtke & Motsch, 2016; Reilly, Wake, Ukoumunne, Bavin, Prior, Cini, Conway, Eadie & Bretherton, 2010; Hoff, 2003), whereas Bavin, Prior, Reilly, Bretherton, Williams, Eadie, Barrett & Ukoumunne (2008) didn’t find such an effect. Sex, birth order and multilingualism also seem to have small effects on child language acquisition (Ulrich et al., 2016; Reilly, Bavin, Bretherton, Conway, Eadie, Cini & Wake, 2009; Szagun et al., 2009; Junker & Stockman, 2002; Fenson et al., 1994). More systematic research is still necessary.

The aim of this study is to analyze the relative influence of lexical, syntactic and morphological skills of German speaking children at an early age on these skills at a later age. Furthermore, the influences of demographic variables, such as socioeconomic status, sex, birth order and multilingualism on language development are examined. Of special interest is the relative influence of different linguistic and non-linguistic factors and their change of effect over time.

Method

This longitudinal study started in 2015. Over the course of four data points, in six month intervals, children were analyzed at the age of 18, 24, 30 and 36 months respectively. A full cohort of 500 children, who were born between December 2013 and January 2014 – all living in Hanover, Germany, – were recruited from the register of the city of Hanover. After being contacted by mail, 218 parents were willing to participate in the study. Exclusion (main reason: German not being one of the child’s first languages) and later dropout led to 197 participants at the first, 185 at the second, 184 at the third and 175 at the fourth data point. All data was collected via parent’s questionnaires. The parents either filled out the survey on paper or online. Every participation was rewarded with an incentive of five euros at every data point. Productive language abilities were measured with the full and short version of the normed questionnaire on early language development FRAKIS (except the first data point) and FRAKIS-K (Szagun, Stumper & Schramm, 2009) as well as the language assessment by parents SBE-2-KT (Suchodoletz & Sachse, 2008) at the second data point and the SBE-3-KT (Kademann, Tippelt & Suchodoletz, 2009) at the fourth data point. The questionnaires include vocabulary checklists containing up to 600 different words as well as questions in respect of morphological and syntactic skills. Furthermore, demographic data regarding sex, birth order, multilingualism and socioeconomic status was collected at the first data point. Socioeconomic status was measured by the parents’ highest education and highest employment status. The status dimension of family income was excluded since most participants didn’t state their income. Multivariate linear regression models were fitted to explain outcome of lexical, morphological and syntactic language abilities separately as well as combined at the second data point. Predictors were the same skills from the first data points plus demographic variables. For analyzation of all four data points, time series analyses will be applied.

Expected Outcomes

The characteristics of the sample are the following: 53,3% of the participants are male and 46,7% female. Regarding birth order, 58,8% of the children are firstborns, whereas 34,7% are born second and 6,5% are positioned third or higher. 79,3% are being raised unilingual in German compared to the 20,7% who are growing up multilingual with German being (one of) the dominant language(s). In terms of socioeconomic status, 10,3% of the participants are considered having a low status, 25,8% are in the middle range and 63,9% have a high socioeconomic status. Linear regression analyses of the first two data points show that early language skills, in particular early vocabulary, have more influence on later language abilities than demographic factors. Besides the size of vocabulary at the age of 18 months, the ability to combine words and the usage of determiners were identified as predictors for language outcomes of two-year olds. The usage of plural forms had no effect on this. Effect sizes differ for different language aspects. In regards of demographic variables, only socioeconomic status was identified as predictor. Combined, the predictors explain 45% (p < .001) of variance in language outcomes of two-year-old children. Further analyses including more data points are to be presented. The relative influence of the different linguistic and non-linguistic influence factors on language development will be presented and possibilities of prediction will be discussed.

References

Bavin, E.L., Prior, M., Reilly, S., Bretherton, L., Williams, J., Eadie, P., Barrett, Y. & Ukoumunne, O.C. (2008). The Early Language in Victoria Study: Predicting vocabulary at age one and two years from gesture and object use. Journal of Child Language, 35(03), 687-701. Dale, P.S., Price, T.S., Bishop, D.V. & Plomin, R. (2003). Outcomes of early language Delay. Predicting persistent and transient language difficulties at 3 and 4 Years. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46(3), 544-560. Doil, H. (2002). Die Sprachentwicklung ist der Schlüssel. Frühe Identifikation von Risikokindern im Rahmen kinderärztlicher Vorsorgeuntersuchungen, unveröffentlichte Dissertation. Bielefeld:Universität Bielefeld, Arbeitseinheit für Allgemeine und Angewandte Entwicklungspsychologie, Fakultät für Psychologie und Sportwissenschaft. Fenson, L., Dale, P.S., Reznick, J.S., Bates, E., Thal, D.J., Pethick, S.J., Tomasello, M., Mervis, C.B. & Stiles, J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of society for research in child development, 59(5), 72-87. Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child development, 74(5), 1368-1378. Hohm, E., Jennen-Steinmetz, C., Schmidt, M. H., & Laucht, M. (2007). Language development at ten months. European child & adolescent psychiatry, 16(3), 149-156. Junker, D.A. & Stockman, I.J. (2002). Expressive vocabulary of German-English bilingual toddlers. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11(4), 381-394. Kademann, S., Tippelt, S., & Suchodoletz, W.v. (2009). Ein Elternfragebogen zur Erfassung sprachentwicklungsgestörter Kinder bei der U7a (SBE-3-KT). Kinderärztliche Praxis, 80(6), 417-422. Reilly, S., Bavin, E.L., Bretherton, L., Conway, L., Eadie, P., Cini, E. & Wake, M. (2009). The Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS): A prospective, longitudinal study of communication skills and expressive vocabulary development at 8, 12 and 24 months. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11(5), 344–357. Reilly, S., Wake, M., Ukoumunne, O. C., Bavin, E., Prior, M., Cini, E., Conway, L., Eadie, P. & Bretherton, L. (2010). Predicting language outcomes at 4 years of age: findings from Early Language in Victoria Study. Pediatrics, 126(6), e1530-e1537. Sachse, S. & Suchodoletz, W. v. (2009). Prognose und Möglichkeiten der Vorhersage der Sprachentwicklung bei Late Talkers. Kinderärztliche Praxis, 80(5), 318-328. Suchodoletz, W.v., Sachse, S. (2008). SBE-2-KT. Sprachbeurteilung durch Eltern. Kurztest für die U7. URL: https://www.ph-heidelberg.de/fileadmin/wp/wp-sachse/SBE-2-KT/SBE-2-KT.pdf [20.01.2017] Szagun, G., Stumper, B. & Schramm, S.A. (2009). Fragebogen zur frühkindlichen Sprachentwicklung (FRAKIS) und FRAKIS-K (Kurzform). Frankfurt a. M.: Pearson. Ulrich, T., Penke, M., Berg, M., Lüdtke, U.M. & Motsch, H.-J. (2016). Der Dativerwerb-Forschungsergebnisse und ihre therapeutischen Konsequenzen. In: Logos 3(24), 176-190.

Author Information

Eveline Pinstock (presenting / submitting)

University of Potsdam

Inclusive Education

Potsdam

Satyam Antonio Schramm

Universität Potsdam