1,721,066 research outputs found
Word recognition in Italian infants: preliminary results
No full textThis is the preliminary study of a larger longitudinal analysis on speech perception in Italian infants. The study involved 30 (16 males and 14 females) monolingual Italian infants. For the purposes of the present study four series of 11 bisyllabic words were developed by means of databases for the Italian language: two lists were composed of familiar words and two lists were composed of rare words. Infants were tested at nine and eleven months of age with the head-turn procedure. The Italian version of CDI was also administered to all the families. Preliminary results indicated that infants showed significantly longer head-turns with familiar words F-(1,F- 15) = 7.42; p = 0.05. Results revealed the ability of Italian children to distinguish familiar from rare words at 11 months of age
EARLY PREDICTORS OF LITERACY SKILLS: AN INTERVENTION PROGRAM FOR ITALIAN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN
No full textIn recent decades the number of studies focused on the assessment of early language skills in preschool children has increased considerably, displaying a variety of tasks and intervention programs for families and teachers aimed at facilitating the transition to primary school. However, the efficacy of the various intervention programs is often unclear. The aim of the present study is to assess language skills and to present an innovative intervention program for teachers and families which will support early literacy. The study, part of a wider project, involves 114 participants (66 males, 48 females) in two groups: the experimental group (78 children) and the control group (36 children). At the beginning of the project the mean age of all the children was 5.6 years (SD = 0.4). The multi-method approach consisted of: a) testing all the children twice, at the beginning of pre-school (pre-test) and the end of pre-school (post-test); b) in the meantime the use, with the experimental group only, of an intervention program by teachers in the classroom and at home by parents. The language skills of each child were evaluated using a new multi- dimensional instrument (TALK) and the Italian version of the PPVT (Stella et al., 2000). The results showed a significant increase in receptive vocabulary for the experimental group only [t(58) = -3.259; p=.002]. Moreover, the analysis of the sub-scales of the TALK assessment showed a significant increase for non-words repetition scores [t(42) = -4.795, p <.001], lexical production, [t(42)= -3.400, p = .001], lexical comprehension [t(42)= -3.577, p <.001] and morphosyntactic comprehension [t(42)= -3.532, p=.001]. These results lead to the development of a useful new instrument for teachers and parents that could evaluate the young child’s language skills, enhance her capacities and prevent long-term learning difficulties
Child’s looking behaviour towards talking faces in a naturalistic setting: Could this mechanism support novel word learning?
No full textBackground. Learning a new word is a complex mechanism which requires the activation of different modalities (Vigliocco et al., 2016): the auditory mechanism alone does not entirely support new word learning since visual stimuli, particularly the adult’s face, also play a specific role (Swingley, 2005). Aims. This study aims to explore whether children’s vocabulary rate can be explained by the percentage of time they spend in looking towards the adult’s face when exposed to a set of words and nonwords containing familiar and non-familiar sounds. Method: Sixteen 12-15-month-old babies were video-recorded—both through a stationary camera and a head-mounted camera on their mother’s head—while being exposed to a set of audio-visual stimuli, real words (F) or non-words (NF), containing sound-stimuli that they were able (+) or not (-) to reproduce. Stimuli were chosen based on the parents’ MB-CDI answers. Their child’s looking behaviour was analysed second-by-second and their vocabulary rate was measured through the MB-CDI. Results: The vocabulary scores were significantly predicted by face looking times (F(4,9) = 4.59, p = .023) only when the children were presented with words containing sound-stimuli that they were able to reproduce (F+ and NF+, ps < .05). A descriptive test showed that children who looked longer towards the adult's face during the naturalistic task had a smaller vocabulary. Implications: This datum supports the double role of the face as a redundant and supportive mechanism for word learning, although more participants are needed to confirm these patterns
Aspetti multi-modali nell’acquisizione del linguaggio: uno studio preliminare.
No full textIntroduzione: Nello studio sperimentale dell’attenzione del bambino per il volto dell'adulto, è stata identificata una variazione evolutiva significativa tra il primo ed il secondo anno di vita nel tempo di attenzione visiva verso le aree degli occhi e della bocca (Hillairet de Boisferon et al., 2018; Lewkowitz & Hansen-Tift, 2012). Inoltre, la preferenza visiva verso l'area della bocca sarebbe connessa allo sviluppo linguistico misurato tramite questionari (Tsang et al., 2018). Ad oggi, non ci sono studi che confermano tale dato considerando lo sviluppo del linguaggio in un contesto naturalistico. Il presente contributo si propone di indagare questo aspetto, utilizzando indici di produzione del linguaggio ricavati dall'interazione mamma-bambino. Metodo: I tempi di attenzione verso due aree del volto dell'adulto, gli occhi e la bocca, di 26 bambini italiani tra i 6 ed i 14 mesi (M= 294 giorni; DS= 81.3) esposti ad un volto femminile narrante una storia nella loro lingua nativa, sono stati misurati sperimentalmente mediante Eye-tracker. Nella stessa settimana dell’esperimento, i bambini sono stati osservati e video-registrati durante 20 minuti di gioco con le loro madri. Le produzioni dei partecipanti sono state trascritte e codificate in base alla loro complessità (vocalizzazioni, lallazioni e parole). Risultati: Dalle analisi preliminari emerge una differenza significativa nel tempo di attenzione verso l’area della bocca tra bambini di età inferiore a 10 mesi (G1) e bambini più grandi, G2 (U = 39, p = .024). Il G1 guarda in misura minore la bocca (18.3% del tempo), rispetto a G2 (32.6% del tempo), in linea con la recente letteratura (Hillairet de Boisferon et al., 2018). Inoltre, dividendo i bambini in due gruppi in base alla loro preferenza visiva (mouth-lookers vs eyes-lookers), emerge che i mouth-lookers hanno una produzione di vocalizzazioni superiore (Mann-Whitney U = 37, p = .029), e una produzione di lallazioni inferiore (Mann-Whitney U = 37, p = .029) rispetto agli eyes-lookers. Conclusioni: Ampliando le evidenze riportate in letteratura, i risultati del presente studio supportano la natura multi-modale dei meccanismi sottostanti l’apprendimento del linguaggio, mostrando che la bocca dell'adulto può fungere da facilitatore visivo per l'azione fono-articolatoria del bambino
The association between emergent vocal ability and audio-visual integration in Italian infants
No full textLewkowicz, & Hansen-Tift, 2012 [L&H-T] investigated the contribution of audio-visual integration to early language development and identified a shift of attention from eyes to mouth. This study aims to assess the relationship between a child's vocal skills and their looking behaviour in a selective audio-visual (preferential looking) task. Twenty-three infants were tested with experimental and observational procedures at 6, 9 and 12 months of age. The eye-tracking experiment, carried out in both the children’s home language, Italian, and an unfamiliar language, English, investigated two areas of attention, the mouth and the eyes. Children were also recorded in their homes in interaction with their mother at all three ages; the number of consonants produced by each infant was extracted from transcriptions of these recordings. The child's vocabulary was assessed at 12 months, using the Italian short version of the McArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MB-CDI; Caselli, et al., 2017). Preliminary results show that at 6 months babies tended to look more at the eyes than at the mouth, in line with L&H-T. However, a repeated-measures ANOVA showed an interaction, at 9 months, between the number of consonants that the infants produced spontaneously and their looking behaviour (F=6.46, p=.015 η2=.755). Specifically, children with higher levels of consonant production showed more attention to the eyes. In contrast, L&H-T report significantly more looking at the mouth at around that age (8 and 10 mos.). At 12 months we found a correlation, for the familiar language only, between comprehension vocabulary on the MB-CDI and the child's looking toward the eyes (r =.889; p =.04); in line with L&H-T, no significant differences emerged between looking toward eyes vs. mouth. These preliminary results suggest a dynamic association between emergent vocal ability, audio-visual integration and language advance in the first year of life
Il linguaggio dei bambini in contesti di gioco solitario e sociale.
No full textLanguage development during social and solitary play. The aim of the present study was to analyse the speech language during social and solitary play at the kindergarten. Children aged between 18 to 36 months participated in the study. Each child was observed during solitary and social play for 10 minutes and the verbal production was transcribed by two independent observers. Moreover each child was observed according to the "Play Observation Scale" (Rubin, Maioni, Hornung, 1976) and the "Primo vocabolario del bambino" (Caselli, Casadio, 1995) was administered to the parents. Data analysis showed different use of language according to social/solitary play. Moreover data analysis showed differences in the children's verbal production according to the age and the social ability. The role of social competence and language development were discussed
Does looking preference towards specific areas of the face explain later language development? An exploratory study in Italian infants
No full textThe articulatory information coming from an adult’s talking mouth and the social meaning expressed by their eyes play an important role in the child’s linguistic and communicative development. Recent studies have reported a significant relationship between the time a child spent looking towards the adult’s mouth and the child’s linguistic skills tested through questionnaires both at the time of the experiment (Morin-Lessard et al., 2019, Tsang et al., 2018) and some months later (Tenenbaum et al., 2015). No studies have so far investigated such relationships by testing children’s language in a naturalistic context. The aim of the present contribution is to test whether the child’s looking preference towards the mouth or the eyes a) is related to his/her current level of development and b) can predict later language production in a naturalistic context. The eye movements of 26 Italian children (M= 294 days; SD= 81.3) were tracked while listening to a story tallied in their native language using EyeLink1000; their language skills were observed at the same time of the experiment (T1) and three months later (T2). The children’s spontaneous vocal production during 20 minutes of interaction with their mother was transcribed and coded using three categories: preverbal forms, babbling, and words. Their expressive and receptive vocabularies were also assessed using the Italian version of the MB-CDI (Caselli et al., 2015) at T2. At both T1 and T2, the children who preferentially looked towards the month displayed lower levels of babbling and words than those who preferred to look toward the eyes. A significant and positive relationship has emerged between looking time to the mouth and expressive vocabulary at T2 (Spearman’s rho = .461, p = .018). These preliminary results suggest that mouth-looking is related to children’s vocabulary development. Further studies, with larger groups, are needed to confirm and generalise these results
Emotional autonomy and the separation process during adolescence
No full textThe aim of the present study was to investigate the internal structure of the Italian version of the EAS and analyse the relation between emotional autonomy and aloneness/loneliness during adolescence. The Italian versions of LLCA and the EAS were administered to 775 Italian adolescents aged between 13 and 19 years of age. Data confirmed the factorial structure proposed by Beyers, Goossens, Van Calster, and Duriez (2005) with two second higher-order factors (chi(2) (71) = 82.95; p = 0.157), even though the Detachment factor has shown low internal consistency. A relation between Separation factor and loneliness toward parents has also emerged. These findings have important implications for the detachment debate, identifying a possible indicator of the developmental process of disengagement from parents in the Separation factor
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