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Does parent talk influence child exploration? Comparison of signing and non-signing parents’ guidance during shared exploration with their children
Poster A21 in Poster Session A, Friday, September 12, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm, Field House
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Carly Leannah1, Allison Fitch1, Rain Bosworth1; 1Rochester Institute of Technology
Background: Developmental theorists emphasize the importance of caregiver talk during children’s exploration in shaping their language learning. Parental guidance through talk -- such as scaffolding, encouragement or direction -- may influence children’s tactile exploration. Research has primarily focused on monolingual English-speaking parents with typically-hearing children, leaving significant gaps in understanding how diverse language experiences shape learning through tactile exploration. Children who are deaf or have deaf parents experience varied home home language environments – some using visual-manual languages like American Sign Language (ASL) at home, others using spoken language. For signing children, hands serve dual purposes: language expression and tactile manipulation, potentially impacting their cognitive strategies during exploration. Rationale: Our ongoing study measures tactile exploration in 2-to-6-year-old children with their caregiver whose primary home language is either spoken English or ASL. Parent utterances are classified as falling in guidance types following methods of Fender and Crowley (2007). We address two research questions: 1) Do speaking vs. signing parents differ in their guidance type? 2) Does parent guidance type influence the depth of children’s exploration? Method: Data so far includes 10 signing parent-child dyads and 22 speaking parent-child dyads. Parents complete home language history surveys in RedCap. Dyads are filmed at a local children’s play-based museum in a mock grocery store exhibit for 10 minutes. Parents wear chest-mounted GoPro harnesses, with an RA filming from 5-8 feet away. Videos are coded using an adapted Exploratory Behavior Scale (EBS), scoring children from 0-3 (minimal to deep exploration) in 30-second intervals over 10 minutes (Van Schijndel et al, 2010). Parent utterances are transcribed and classified as: scaffolding, encouragement, directing, or other/unrelated. Preliminary Results: To address our first research question, our planned analysis model will predict average utterance frequency from parent language modality (signing, speaking) and guidance type (scaffolding, encouragement, directing) as primary predictors. Child age, child gender, caregiver gender and caregiver education are covariates. For our second research question, we will examine whether average EBS scores across children are predicted by parent language modality and guidance type. Conclusion: While exploratory play clearly benefits language learning, few studies examine how exploratory play behaviors vary based on home language modality and experience. Our research examines how language modality influences parent-child interactions during exploration. Recognizing the factors that shape children's exploratory behavior is important because different language experiences may provide children with varying tools for tactile exploration and thus their understanding of the environment. Furthermore, comparing signing and speaking parents’ strategies helps us understand how diverse language experiences shape children’s exploratory behavior. The EBS shows promise as a quantitative measure for assessing preschoolers’ tactile exploration, contributing to our understanding of relationships between linguistic input, modality, and active learning.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Signed Language and Gesture