A cross-cultural examination of young children's everyday language experiences

BUNCE, J.; SODERSTROM, M.; BERGELSON, E.; ROSEMBERG, C.; STEIN, A.; ALAM, F., MIGDALEK, M.; CASILLAS, M.

Journal of Child Language

Cambridge University Press

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2024

0305-0009

We present an exploratory cross-cultural analysis of the quantity of target-child-directedspeech and adult-directed speech to young children learning North American English (US &Canadian), United Kingdom English, Argentinian Spanish, Tseltal (Tenejapa, Mayan), and Yélî Dnye (Rossel Island, Papuan), using annotations from 69 children aged 2–36 months. Using a novel methodological approach, our cross-cultural findings support prior work suggesting that target-child-directed speech quantities are stable across early development, while adult-directed speech decreases. A preponderance of speech from women was found to a similar degree across groups, with less target-child-directed speech from men and children in the North American samples than elsewhere. Consistently across groups, children also heard more adult-directed than target-child-directed speech. Finally, the numbers of talkers present at any given moment strongly impacted children’s moment-to-moment input quantities. These findings illustrate how the structure of home life impacts patterns of early language exposure across diverse societies.