Date of Award

6-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Program

Speech and Hearing Science

Research Advisor

Erinn Finke, PhD

Committee

Mari Beth Coleman, PhD; Jillian McCarthy, PhD; Kevin Reilly, PhD; Ilsa Schwarz, PhD

Keywords

Developmental Language Disorder; Verbs; Caregivers; Vocabulary

Abstract

Purpose. This project compared how children and caregivers use gestures and objects to contribute to the representation of nouns and verbs during play interactions between children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and their caregivers. Observations were used to determine if there was any differentiation in how children or caregivers used gestures and/or objects when nouns and verbs were presented within the play context.

Methods. Observations of parent-child dyads were recorded at a local children’s museum. All dyads included children with DLD between four and six years of age. The child and caregiver’s use of gestures and objects within the interaction were coded within each recording.

Results. Children’s use of various gestures (deictic or iconic) and different forms of interaction with objects impacted the word type modeled by their caregivers. Caregivers also differentiated how they paired gestures and objects when they were presenting nouns or verbs during the interactions.

Conclusion. The results of this project show that the child’s gestural and object use impacts whether they are exposed to nouns or verbs. These results also show caregivers differentiate their gestural and object use when modeling nouns and verbs. These observations indicate further investigation into the various contextual factors that influence how children with and without DLD learn verbs is warranted.

Declaration of Authorship

Declaration of Authorship is included in the supplemental files.

DOI

10.21007/aetd.cghs.2024.0008

Additional Files
2024-008-Grissom_AETD_DOA.pdf (632 kB)
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