Language Experiences, Language Use, and Language Abilities in an Inclusion Classroom

The quantity and quality of children’s early language input from adults in the preschool classroom are likely predictors of children’s language outcomes. Using big behavioral data garnered from automated measurement techniques, we examined the quantity, quality, and temporality of vocalizations occurring in preschool classrooms and their relation to language abilities. Vocalization data were collected using LENA audio recorders over 34 observations in three oral language inclusion classrooms for children with hearing loss between 2.5 and 3.5 years of age (N=29, 14 Hispanic). The mean phonemic diversity of vocalizations was employed as a measure of the quality of classroom speech. Receptive and expressive language abilities were measured at the end of the school year using the Preschool Language Scales (PLS-5). As hearing experience (time with proficient hearing [from birth or aided hearing]) increased, children produced more frequent, longer, and more phonemically diverse vocalizations. The frequency, phonemic diversity, and temporality of adult speech positively predicted the frequency, phonemic diversity, and temporality of child speech, respectively. Children who produced more phonemically diverse vocalizations exhibited higher end-of-year language abilities, even when controlling for hearing experience. Mediation analyses indicated that the phonemic diversity of children’s language production mediated the effect of children’s language input on their receptive and expressive language abilities. These findings suggest that qualitatively richer language experiences strengthen children’s verbal production abilities, which in turn are associated with language outcomes. In sum, the phonemic diversity of children’s vocalizations emerged as a promising correlate of developing language capacities and target for individualized intervention.</p

Language Use in Preschool Inclusive Classrooms: The Roles of Peer and Teacher Input

Children's language production during preschool is a strong predictor of future language and literacy outcomes. However, the interactive processes that support children's classroom language production and the extent to which these processes might differ among children with disabilities like hearing loss (HL), autism spectrum disorders (ASD), or developmental delay (DD), remains unknown. Here we examined the relative contribution of peer and teacher language input to children's subsequent language production. Objective measures of location and phoneme production quantified children's vocal interactions with peers and teachers. Participants included 131 preschoolers and 20 teachers. Children produced a higher rate of phonemes with peers than with teachers. The rate of phonemes that children were exposed to from social partners predicted their subsequent rate of phoneme production, an effect that was stronger for peer input compared to teacher input. Teacher input was a stronger predictor of subsequent language production for children with ASD compared to typically developing (TD) children. The effect of peer input on children's subsequent rate of phoneme production did not vary between children with HL, ASD, or DD compared to TD children. Children's rate of phoneme production with peers was a stronger predictor of receptive language abilities for children with ASD compared to TD children, while children with HL or DD did not differ from TD children in this respect. Thus, language input from both peers and teachers influences children's future language production. However, the amplified effect of peer relative to teacher input on children's subsequent language production highlights a unique role of peer interactions in scaffolding children's language skills

A new perspective on the role of physical salience in visual search: Graded effect of salience on infants attention.

We tested 6- and 8-month-old White and non-White infants (N = 53 total, 28 girls) from Northern California in a visual search task to determine whether a unique item in an otherwise homogeneous display (a singleton) attracts attention because it is a unique singleton and pops out in a categorical manner, or whether attention instead varies in a graded manner on the basis of quantitative differences in physical salience. Infants viewed arrays of four or six items; one item was a singleton and the other items were identical distractors (e.g., a single cookie and three identical toy cars). At both ages, infants looked to the singletons first more often, were faster to look at singletons, and looked longer at singletons. However, when a computational model was used to quantify the relative salience of the singleton in each display-which varied widely among the different singleton-distractor combinations-we found a strong, graded effect of physical salience on attention and no evidence that singleton status per se influenced attention. In addition, consistent with other research on attention in infancy, the effect of salience was stronger for 6-month-old infants than for 8-month-old infants. Taken together, these results show that attention-getting and attention-holding in infancy vary continuously with quantitative variations in physical salience rather than depending in a categorical manner on whether an item is unique. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Classroom language during COVID-19: Associations between mask-wearing and objectively measured teacher and preschooler vocalizations

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mask-wearing in classrooms has become commonplace. However, there are little data on the effect of face-masks on children’s language input and production in educational contexts, like preschool classrooms which over half of United States children attend. Leveraging repeated objective measurements, we longitudinally examined child and teacher speech-related vocalizations in two cohorts of 3.5–4.5-year-old children enrolled in the same oral language classroom that included children with and without hearing loss. Cohort 1 was observed before COVID-19 (no face-masks, N  = 20) and Cohort 2 was observed during COVID-19 (with face-masks; N  = 15). Vocalization data were collected using child-worn audio recorders over 12 observations spanning two successive school years, yielding 9.09 mean hours of audio recording per child. During COVID-19 teachers produced a higher number of words per minute than teachers observed prior to COVID-19. However, teacher vocalizations during COVID-19 contained fewer unique phonemes than teacher vocalizations prior to COVID-19. Children observed during COVID-19 did not exhibit deficits in the duration, rate, or phonemic diversity of their vocalizations compared to children observed prior to COVID-19. Children observed during COVID-19 produced vocalizations that were longer in duration than vocalizations of children observed prior to COVID-19. During COVID-19 (but not before), children who were exposed to a higher number of words per minute from teachers produced more speech-related vocalizations per minute themselves. Overall, children with hearing loss were exposed to teacher vocalizations that were longer in duration, more teacher words per minute, and more phonemically diverse teacher speech than children with typical hearing. In terms of production, children with hearing loss produced vocalizations that were longer in duration than the vocalizations of children with typical hearing. Among children observed during COVID-19, children with hearing loss exhibited a higher vocalization rate than children with typical hearing. These results suggest that children’s language production is largely unaffected by mask use in the classroom and that children can benefit from the language they are exposed to despite teacher mask-wearing

Audio-Based Group Detection for Classroom Dynamics Analysis

Group detection is a fundamental problem in sociological and behavioral data analysis and has attracted much attention in recent years. Most of the current approaches focus on using visual data, such as still images and videos, to detect groups. One of the most important applications of group detection is to assist psychologists to understand the classroom dynamics. However, the camera recordings may be unavailable and it could be infeasible to set up the cameras without blind spots. Therefore, as an alternative approach to group detection, we propose an audio-based framework that utilizes multiple synchronized audio data streams collected from wearable devices on each subject. In this paper, the audio recordings collected from a preschool classroom over multiple days are used to produce the group detection results which are validated by clustering the subject locations collected along with the audio data. The experiment shows on average 0.391 Normalized Mutual Information (NMI) scores for the detected groups by the audio-based framework and location-based clustering

Reciprocal Patterns of Peer Speech in Preschoolers with and without Hearing Loss

Children with hearing loss often attend inclusive preschool classrooms aimed at improving their spoken language skills. Although preschool classrooms are fertile environments for vocal interaction with peers, little is known about the dyadic processes that influence children's speech to one another and foster their language abilities and how these processes may vary in children with hearing loss. We used new objective measurement approaches to identify and quantify children's vocalizations during social contact, as determined by children's proximity and mutual orientation. The contributions of peer vocalizations to children's future vocalizations and language abilities were examined in oral language inclusion classrooms containing children with hearing loss who use hearing aids or cochlear implants and their typically hearing peers. Across over 600 hours of recorded vocal interactions of twenty-nine 2.5-3.5 year olds (16 girls) in three cohorts of children in a classroom, we found that vocalizations from each peer on a given observation predicted a child's vocalizations to that same peer on the subsequent observation. Children who produced more vocalizations to their peers had higher receptive and expressive language abilities, as measured by a standardized end-of-year language assessment. In fact, vocalizations peers had an indirect association with end-of-year language abilities as mediated by children's vocalizations peers. These findings did not vary as a function of hearing status. Overall, then, the results demonstrate the importance of dyadic peer vocal interactions for children's language use and abilities