The role of language experience and caregiver speech on children’s language learning

Language is a unique feat of the human species and yet it is something we can easily take for granted – after all, from birth children simply ‘soak up’ language, learning to speak words and utterances seemingly without effort. Yet, there are huge differences in language learning: even at two years of age, some children will be producing only 50-60 words while others will produce almost 600. Clearly, some of this variation lies within the individual. However, we have found that a large amount of the variation is additionally explained by two factors: the quality of the language input and how familiar one already is with the language being processed (e.g., Jones, 2016; Jones, Rowland & Freudenthal, under review). We are now keen to explore how these factors may shape the child’s language ability by offering a PhD opportunity to investigate how one or both influence any area of language that you choose.

Quality not quantity. In essence, the suggestion here is ‘less is more’ – of importance is not how much language the child hears, but what they hear. This is a really important finding that needs further investigation, such as whether training on a more diverse vocabulary improves language outcomes or how storytelling and reading books to children – where greater variation in language is inevitable – influences the child’s learning.

Effects of language familiarity. We have already investigated language performance in English and other languages for spelling and writing (e.g., Scaltritti, Arfe, Torrance & Peressotti, 2016; Torrance et al., 2015) and we already know that children’s procesing of spoken language is influenced by familiarity (e.g., Bannard & Matthews, 2008). However, familiarity is a matter of degree – everything we have heard is to a greater or lesser extent ‘familiar’.

Speed of processing and familiarity. Converging evidence suggests that children who hear a lot of language are able to process language more quickly (e.g., Weisleder & Fernald, 2013). However, our findings above uniquely suggest that this may be driven by the quality rather than the quantity of the language that children hear (greater quality -> more language learned -> faster processing). This area is ripe for examination be it in writing, spelling or indeed speech production and we are in a good position to do so, having laboratory equipment (e.g., eye trackers) that can give detailed behavioural information to answer research questions.

Specific qualifications/subject areas required of the applicants for this project (e.g. First degree in specific subject area):

UK 1st Class / 2.1 Bachelor’s degree (or UK equivalent according to NARIC) and/or UK Master’s degree with a minimum of a merit (or UK equivalent according to NARIC) in psychology, linguistics or a related discipline.