Grantees: Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and LENA
Study Type: Correlational Study
Principal Investigators: Yael Weiss, Elizabeth Huber, Neva M. Corrigan, Naja Ferjan Ramirez, Patricia Kuhl – Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington-Seattle; Vasily L. Yarnykh – University of Washington-Seattle
Project Description: This is a correlational study of parent and child language- and reading-related skills in early childhood for 53 parent-child pairs, as measured by the Language ENvironment Analysis System (LENA) and other measures of language development. For a subgroup of 20 participant children, the study also examined the relation between those measures and aspects of youth brain development using quantitative macromolecular proton fraction mapping.
Key Findings: Longitudinal studies provide the unique opportunity to test whether early language provides a scaffolding for the acquisition of the ability to read. This study tests the hypothesis that parental language input during the first two years of life predicts emergent literacy skills at five years of age, and that white matter development observed early in the third year (at 26 months) may help to account for these effects. Researchers collected naturalistic recordings of parent and child language at six, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months using the Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA) in a group of typically developing infants. They then examined the relationship between language measures during infancy and follow-up measures of reading related skills at five years old, in the same group of participants (N = 53). A subset of these children also completed diffusion and quantitative MRI scans at two years old (N = 20). Within this subgroup, diffusion tractography was used to identify white matter pathways that are considered critical to language and reading development, namely, the arcuate fasciculus (AF), superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculi, and inferior occipital-frontal fasciculus. Quantitative macromolecular proton fraction (MPF) mapping was used to characterize myelin density within these separately defined regions of interest. The longitudinal data were then used to test correlations between early language input and output, white matter measures at age two years, and pre-literacy skills at five years old. Parental language input, child speech output, and parent-child conversational turns correlated with pre-literacy skills, as well as myelin density, estimates within the left arcuate and superior longitudinal fasciculus. Mediation analyses indicated that the left AF accounted for longitudinal relationships between infant home language measures and five-year letter identification and letter-sound knowledge, suggesting that the left AF myelination at two years may serve as a mechanism by which early language experience supports emergent literacy.
Study Citation: Weiss, Yael, Huber, Elizabeth, Ramírez, Naja Ferjan, Corrigan, Neva M., Yarny, Vasily L., & Patricia K. Kuhl (2022). Language input in late infancy scaffolds emergent literacy skills and predicts reading related white matter development. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 16:922552. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.922552
Full report here.
The Key Findings above were reproduced from the published report and do not necessarily reflect interpretation of Overdeck Family Foundation staff.
