Preschoolers first words: which factors for which trajectory ?

  Members

Christophe DOS SANTOS , Ludivine GLAS , Stephanie GOBET , Lucie METRAL , Sophie KERN

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Scientific framework and objectives

The aim of the project is to model the order of acquisition of words in children's productive lexicon and the accuracy of production, taking into account the psycholinguistic characteristics of words as well as their distributional characteristics in the language and/or the language addressed to the child. The work to date has focused mainly on populations of monolingual children and multilingual children. It also involves children exposed to Baby Signs (systematic association of a sign with speech). The latter population is being investigated in collaboration with S. Gobet, a CNRS delegate at the laboratory and co-supervisor of L. Métral's PhD. Although users of this practice are fairly unanimous in extolling its advantages, there is very little empirical work that has measured the effects of the practice on communication between adults and children, or even its effect on children's language development.

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  Financial support

• ANR Programme Blanc SHS 2
  PREMS : Influence of phonological development and input on first words
  Agence Nationale de la Recherche
  2012-2015
• Fondation de Poitiers
  Baby sign and language and communication development
  Fondation de Poitiers
• Labex ASLAN
  Baby Sign
  Laboratoire d'excellence

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  Publications

• Chami, N., Kern, S., Messara, C., 2022, "Development of phonetic complexity in multilingual Lebanese children", International symposium on monolingual and bilingual speech (ISMBS2022), University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 6-9 avril
• Charkaluk, M., Rousseau, J., Benhammou, V., Datin-Dorrière, V., Flaman, C., Gire, C., Kern, S., Pierrat, V., Kaminiski, M., Marret, S., 2019, "Association of Language Skills with Other Developmental Domains in Extremely, Very, and Moderately Preterm Children: EPIPAGE 2 Cohort Study", The Journal of Pediatrics, 208:mai, pp. 114-120
• dos Santos, C., Valente, D., Kern, S., 2019, "A nonword repetition task to investigate the relation between phonology and vocabulary size in 30 month-old children.", 17th Meeting of the French Phonology Network, Orléans (France), 26-28 juin
• Kern, S., dos Santos, C., 2018, "Invariance in variation: frequency and neighbourhood density as explanatory factors ", Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 22, pp. 183-200
• Kern, S., Chenu, F., Glas, L., 2015, "Role of frequency and phonetic complexity on first words order of acquisition", Child Language Symposium, University of Warwick, 20th - 21st July 2015
• Kern, S., dos Santos, C., 2016, "Influence of frequency, neighborhood density and phonetic complexity on first words development in French", VIIIth International Conference of Language Acquisition, Palma de Majorque, Espagne, 7-9 septembre
• Kern, S., 2018, "The interaction of phonetic/phonological development and input characteristics in early lexical development: longitudinal and crosslinguistic perspectives", Canadian Journal of Linguistics / Revue canadienne de linguistique, 63:4, pp. 481-492
• Kern, S. (ed), 2019, "Le développement du langage chez l'enfant - Théorie, clinique, pratique ", Deboeck Supérieur, 272 p.
• Kern, S. (ed), 2018, "The interaction of phonetic/phonological development and input characteristics in early lexical development: longitudinal and crosslinguistic perspectives. ", 63(4), Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 206 p.
• Kern, S., Valente, D., dos Santos, C., 2019, "Lexical development in French/Portuguese speaking-toddlers: vocabulary size and language dominance ", Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech, 1:2
• Kern, S., Guernalec Levy, G., 2019, "Quand les enfants des quartiers populaires manquent de mots", Cahiers du Développement Social Urbain, 70, pp. 16-17
• LeNormand, M.T., Kern, S., 2018, "Suivi du langage d’enfants bilingues issus de milieux sociaux défavorisés: Enjeu clinique, pédagogique et social", Devenir, Revue européenne de développement de l'enfant, 30, pp. 41-53
• O'Toole, C., Gatt, D., Hickey, T., Miękisz, A., Haman, E., Armon-Lotem, S., Rinker, T., Ohana, O., dos Santos, C., Kern, S., 2016, "Parent report of early lexical production in bilingual children: a cross-linguistic CDI comparison", International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 20:2, pp. 124-145
• Stokes, S., Kern, S., dos Santos, C., 2012, "Extended Statistical Learning as an Account for slow vocabulary growth", Journal of Child Language, 39:1, pp. 105-129
• Valente, D., Kern, S., dos Santos, C., 2018, "First word development in bilingual French-Portuguese toddlers: a comparison to monolingual norms and executive function abilities", Language, Identity and Education in Multilingual Contexts (LIEMC18), Dublin (Irlande), 1-3 février
• Valente, D., Kern, S., dos Santos, C., 2018, "Executive function and early lexical development of Luso-French bilingual toddlers", Workshop on Current Issues in Child Bilingual Development, Sydney (Australie), 26-27 juillet (poster)
• Valente, D., Kern, S., dos Santos, C., 2019, "Lexical acquisition in French-Portuguese toddlers: exploring the relationship between vocabulary size and executive function abilities", XIV International Symposium of Psycholinguistics, Tarragona, Espagne, 10-13 avril