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Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development

Language acquisition is influenced by the quality and quantity of input that language learners receive. In particular, early language development has been said to rely on the acoustic speech stream, as well as on language-related visual information, such as the cues provided by the mouth of interloc...

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Autores principales: Feijoo, Sara, Amadó, Anna, Sidera, Francesc, Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva, Serrat, Elisabet
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10413096/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37575436
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1205294
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author Feijoo, Sara
Amadó, Anna
Sidera, Francesc
Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva
Serrat, Elisabet
author_facet Feijoo, Sara
Amadó, Anna
Sidera, Francesc
Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva
Serrat, Elisabet
author_sort Feijoo, Sara
collection PubMed
description Language acquisition is influenced by the quality and quantity of input that language learners receive. In particular, early language development has been said to rely on the acoustic speech stream, as well as on language-related visual information, such as the cues provided by the mouth of interlocutors. Furthermore, children’s expressive language skills are also influenced by the variability of interlocutors that provided the input. The COVID-19 pandemic has offered an unprecedented opportunity to explore the way these input factors affect language development. On the one hand, the pervasive use of masks diminishes the quality of speech, while it also reduces visual cues to language. On the other hand, lockdowns and restrictions regarding social gatherings have considerably limited the amount of interlocutor variability in children’s input. The present study aims at analyzing the effects of the pandemic measures against COVID-19 on early language development. To this end, 41 children born in 2019 and 2020 were compared with 41 children born before 2012 using the Catalan adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs). Results do not show significant differences in vocabulary between pre- and post-Covid children, although there is a tendency for children with lower vocabulary levels to be in the post-Covid group. Furthermore, a relationship was found between interlocutor variability and participants’ vocabulary, indicating that those participants with fewer opportunities for socio-communicative diversity showed lower expressive vocabulary scores. These results reinforce other recent findings regarding input factors and their impact on early language learning.
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spelling pubmed-104130962023-08-11 Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development Feijoo, Sara Amadó, Anna Sidera, Francesc Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva Serrat, Elisabet Front Psychol Psychology Language acquisition is influenced by the quality and quantity of input that language learners receive. In particular, early language development has been said to rely on the acoustic speech stream, as well as on language-related visual information, such as the cues provided by the mouth of interlocutors. Furthermore, children’s expressive language skills are also influenced by the variability of interlocutors that provided the input. The COVID-19 pandemic has offered an unprecedented opportunity to explore the way these input factors affect language development. On the one hand, the pervasive use of masks diminishes the quality of speech, while it also reduces visual cues to language. On the other hand, lockdowns and restrictions regarding social gatherings have considerably limited the amount of interlocutor variability in children’s input. The present study aims at analyzing the effects of the pandemic measures against COVID-19 on early language development. To this end, 41 children born in 2019 and 2020 were compared with 41 children born before 2012 using the Catalan adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs). Results do not show significant differences in vocabulary between pre- and post-Covid children, although there is a tendency for children with lower vocabulary levels to be in the post-Covid group. Furthermore, a relationship was found between interlocutor variability and participants’ vocabulary, indicating that those participants with fewer opportunities for socio-communicative diversity showed lower expressive vocabulary scores. These results reinforce other recent findings regarding input factors and their impact on early language learning. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-07-27 /pmc/articles/PMC10413096/ /pubmed/37575436 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1205294 Text en Copyright © 2023 Feijoo, Amadó, Sidera, Aguilar-Mediavilla and Serrat. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Feijoo, Sara
Amadó, Anna
Sidera, Francesc
Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva
Serrat, Elisabet
Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development
title Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development
title_full Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development
title_fullStr Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development
title_full_unstemmed Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development
title_short Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development
title_sort language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against covid-19 on early language development
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10413096/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37575436
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1205294
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