SES and word comprehension: a cross-cultural study using touch screens

ROSEMBERG, CELIA RENATA; ALAM FLORENCIA; CRISTIA, ALEJANDRINA; SCAFF,C.

Nijmegen

Congreso; Many Paths to Language (MPAL); 2017

There are different ways in research to assess the language skills of a child early on in development. With respect to word comprehension,it is common to rely on vocabulary assessment questionnaires administered to the child?s primary caregiver, the most popular probably being the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory, or CDI (Fenson et al., 1994). This tool is a standardized measure, available in multiple languages, simple to administer, and includes many lexical categories. However, there are several drawbacks to this type of instrument, notably the fact that caregivers may be inaccurate in their reports in ways that are not independent from their cultural and socio-economic status (e.g., Fenson et al., 1995).Other strands of research have attempted to develop more direct measures of word knowledge and processing gathered from the child him/herself so as to avoid the bias potentially imposed by caregiver reports. A range of behavioral responses have been collected from children, with some studies using gaze shifting between two visual referents and others using some overt decision signal, such as pointing or touching the referent, typically in a laboratory setting. The main drawbacks of such laboratory studies are their small sample sizes and their limited access to populations with more heterogeneous backgrounds. A recent study compared three techniques (looking, pointing, touching) with comparable materials, and concluded that touch-screen vocabulary tests may be the best technique (Frank et al., 2016). Popularity for touch-screen devices and their ubiquity have spurred interest in the potential use of these devices as scientific tools. They are particularly interesting in the context of attempt to measure performances of often neglected communities such as children growing up in low socioeconomic-status (SES) households. The present paper confirms this conclusion by drawing from data collected to assess the impact on child word comprehension of socioeconomic variation.We designed a forced paired choice task inspired in the Computerized Comprehension Task (Friend & Keplinger, 2003), thus containing 41 pairs of words with different levels of difficulty and three different lexical categories (nouns, adjectives and verbs). This task was implemented on an iPad, which recorded both accuracy and response times for each trial. Thanks to its portability, the test administered in a small number of daycares in two countries, Argentina and France.The lexical items were originally chosen in Argentina, where a large corpus existed which allowed us to match frequency of occurrence across low and mid SES groups. The test was then adapted for French were no significant differences on children's performances as a function of exposure to touch-screen devices. The first study included 3-year-old Argentinean children (N=112) in two daycares, one in a residential neighborhood and the other in an urban-marginal area. Results showed significant differences between the two groups regarding accuracy but not response times on word processing measures, with strong age effects in both measures. In the second study, we assessed French 2- to 3-year-olds (N=117) in three daycares in the south of Paris, a very cosmopolitan area with diverse socio-economic profiles and backgrounds. Parents of participating children completed a questionnaire with sociodemographic information about the child and her previous exposure to touchscreen devices, which had not been collected in Study 1. We replicated the findings of Study 1. Interestingly, the size of the SES effects were very similar across both studies. Together with recent work (Frank et al., 2016), these results highlight some advantages of using a touch-screen device for assessing word comprehension in young children. This technology allows access to remote populations, testing more in more ecological conditions, and recruitment of more participants thanks to its portability. Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D. J., Pethick, S. J., ... & Stiles, J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the society for research in child development, i-185.Frank, M. C., Sugarman, E., Horowitz, A. C., Lewis, M. L., & Yurovsky, D. (2016). Using tablets to collect data from young children. Journal of Cognition and Development, 17(1), 1-17.Friend, M., & Keplinger, M. (2003). An infant-based assessment of early lexicon acquisition. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35, 302?309.