Psychology

The Role of Overheard Speech in the Ambient Verbal Environments of Children from Two American Communities

Document Type

Poster Presentation

Location

Indianapolis, IN

Subject Area

Psychology

Start Date

13-4-2018 8:30 AM

End Date

13-4-2018 10:00 AM

Description

Joint attention episodes where a single caregiver interacts with an infant in a face-to-face posture have long been considered the most significant way for young children to learn novel vocabularly (Tomasello, 1995). However, cross-cultural evidence has suggested that children from many non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies are not routinely exposed to joint attention episodes, and learn language predominantly from overhearing the speech of adults around them (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984). Interest in the potential of overheard speech as a source of vocabulary input has also increased due to the desire to foster better language outcomes among children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (Ghofrani, Luyster, & Arunachalam, 2017).

Despite this interest, little is known about the actual amount of overheard speech in young children’s ambient environments and the social configurations in which this speech occurs. Verbatim transcripts from 67. 5 hours of observations from a rural, Indiana working-class community and from 35 hours of observations from a rural, Alabama poor community comprise the data for this project. All speech not addressed to the focal child is being coded along two dimensions: (1) Is the speech about the child? and (2) To what degree is the child involved in the conversation? Preliminary results suggest that the majority of overheard speech is not about the child, and that the child’s attention is often not focused on these conversations. These results cast doubt on the importance of overheard speech in the lives of typically developing American children.

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Apr 13th, 8:30 AM Apr 13th, 10:00 AM

The Role of Overheard Speech in the Ambient Verbal Environments of Children from Two American Communities

Indianapolis, IN

Joint attention episodes where a single caregiver interacts with an infant in a face-to-face posture have long been considered the most significant way for young children to learn novel vocabularly (Tomasello, 1995). However, cross-cultural evidence has suggested that children from many non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies are not routinely exposed to joint attention episodes, and learn language predominantly from overhearing the speech of adults around them (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984). Interest in the potential of overheard speech as a source of vocabulary input has also increased due to the desire to foster better language outcomes among children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (Ghofrani, Luyster, & Arunachalam, 2017).

Despite this interest, little is known about the actual amount of overheard speech in young children’s ambient environments and the social configurations in which this speech occurs. Verbatim transcripts from 67. 5 hours of observations from a rural, Indiana working-class community and from 35 hours of observations from a rural, Alabama poor community comprise the data for this project. All speech not addressed to the focal child is being coded along two dimensions: (1) Is the speech about the child? and (2) To what degree is the child involved in the conversation? Preliminary results suggest that the majority of overheard speech is not about the child, and that the child’s attention is often not focused on these conversations. These results cast doubt on the importance of overheard speech in the lives of typically developing American children.