第22屆 典型發展和腦性麻痺兒童的照顧者兒向語研究

典型發展和腦性麻痺兒童的照顧者兒向語研究

Child-directed speech in typically developing children and children with cerebral palsy

陳姵如¹、邱柏媗¹、陳庭瑤¹、周育瑄¹、莫絜文¹、陳麗美²

¹Pei-Ru Chen, ¹Po-Hsuan Chiu, ¹Ting-Yao Chen, ¹Yu-Hsuan Chou, ¹Chieh-Wen Mo,

 ²Li-Mei Chen

¹國立成功大學外文系（所）大學生、²國立成功大學外文系（所）教授

¹Undergraduate student, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University

²Professor, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University

Background and Purpose: Different language learning environments are strongly related to children’s vocabulary growth (Montag, Jones, & Smith, 2018). This study observed and analyzed the language environments of typically developing children and children with cerebral palsy. Child-directed speech between these two groups of families were compared. The total number of words (the “tokens”) and the number of different words (the “types”) were critical to children’s language development. More tokens give children more possibilities to learn more individual words, and more types enable them to build wider vocabulary and semantic networks. Meanwhile, hearing is the most crucial for children in the process of language learning since more talk helps children learn language more rapidly. In order to find the relations and differences in language environments between these two groups of families, the characteristics of child-directed speech was examined in terms of lexical quantity, diversity, and repetition rate.

Methods: Twenty-one recordings of spontaneous interaction between children and their caregivers were analyzed, including 4 typically developing children and 4 children with cerebral palsy, ranging from 0 to 33 months of age. Praat was used to transcribe child-directed speech including words and phrases, and their tokens, types, and frequency were calculated.  

Results: Major findings were: 1) In average, compared to caregivers of children with cerebral palsy, caregivers of typically developing children used more different words and phrases; 2) In terms of lexical diversity in type/token ratio, caregivers of children with cerebral palsy gave more varieties of words and phrases than caregivers of typically developing children; 3) The most frequent words shared by caregivers of both groups when interacting with children are: 你、不、好、有、媽、這。

Conclusion: More words and phrases, more repetitions and more diversity are undoubtedly beneficial to language development. The findings in this preliminary study should be verified with more data and systematic analysis in future studies.

Keywords: typically developing children, children with cerebral palsy, child-directed speech, language environment