Project Activities
The investigators collected data on language input, social interaction, and language development repeatedly over the 9-month school year to investigate the role of teacher and peer speech in the development of language and social connections within inclusive preschool classrooms. In addition to more traditional measures of observation and child- and teacher-report, the researchers used several advanced technology systems that capture language input and spatial orientation at the individual child level. Analyses tested the relationship between language input from teachers and peers and later language development and the relationship between language ability and exposure to vocal input and explored whether the relationships are moderated by type of disability.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The research took place in 19 inclusive preschool classrooms in urban and suburban areas in Florida. Of these classrooms, 10 were ASD inclusion classrooms, 3 were Hearing Loss inclusion classrooms, and 6 classrooms were inclusion classrooms that served children with a variety of disabilities and delays including ASD.
Sample
Participants included 206 3- to 5-year-old children (30 children with ASD, 101 children with other disabilities, and 75 typically developing children) and their teachers (56 teachers, 2-3 per classroom).
Malleable factors included teacher conversational turn-taking with children and peer speech during social contact.
Research design and methods
This study used a longitudinal design with repeated assessment of children's language exposure and development over the 9-month school year. Automated data collection of language occurred monthly; standardized language assessments were collected at the beginning and end of the school year; observer ratings of child behavior and peer interactions were collected twice during each of the first 2 years; and sociometric data on children's friendship networks were collected once in each of the first 2 years. Each year, new children joined the study as they enrolled in the participating classrooms. The design was used to investigate a reciprocal model of language development to determine whether language exposure is related to later language abilities, and to investigate whether language abilities are related to later language exposure.
Control condition
Due to the nature of the research design, there was no control group.
Key measures
Proximal language measures (overall vocalizations, vocalizations in contact with peers, and teacher's turn-taking with individual children) were captured through automated, synchronized recording devices on children and teachers that capture information on physical location and orientation to others (Ubisense Tag Module) as well as vocalizations (Language Environment Analysis). Measures of more distal language outcomes included the Preschool Language Scales-5th Edition (expressive and receptive language, syntax skills). The technology used to capture language was also used to capture observational data for coding of child behavior and peer interactions. Additional measures of peer interaction in the classroom included the sociometric ratings by peers to determine friendship networks, Individualized Classroom Assessment System (inCLASS) to capture classroom engagement and peer interactions, and the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale to measure teacher-reported quality of peer interactions during play. Finally, the Battelle Developmental Inventory (2nd edition) was used to assess levels of developmental delay of children in inclusion classrooms.
Data analytic strategy
The research team will analyze the data to examine associations and moderation using multi-level modeling in which observations are nested within children and children are nested within classrooms.
Key outcomes
The main findings of this project, as reported by the principal investigator, are as follows:
- Children with ASD and other developmental disabilities are less central to their peer classroom social networks in which network ties reflect children’s speech to one another than are typically developing children. Children’s centrality to these networks was positively associated with language abilities even after controlling for children’s ASD status. Children’s engagement with peers and teachers (rated on the inCLASS) was positively associated with their speech when in social contact with those partners.
- The speech children hear from specific peers during social contact during a given monthly observation is predictive of children’s vocalizations during social contact with those specific peers in the subsequent monthly observation.
- The level of vocal phonemic complexity children hear from specific peers and teacher during social contact is predictive of the phonemic complexity of children’s vocalizations during social contact with those specific peers and teachers in subsequent observations.
- Generally, speech that children produce in social contact with peers, and the phonemic complexity of children’s speech, is associated with their assessed receptive and expressive language abilities.
- Children with ASD, children with other developmental disabilities, and typically developing children tend to spend time in social contact with children from the same group and tend to approach other children in the same group at higher velocities than they approach other children.
- Teachers produced more vocalizations and higher mean length of utterance, with more diverse words, and engage in more conversational turns with children in structured activity contexts (e.g., circle time) than in unstructured activity contexts (e.g., free play). Typically developing children produce more vocalizations during unstructured than structured activities, but children with developmental disabilities do not show this difference (Custode, 2022)
- Children’s language abilities were positively associated with their rates of conversational turn-taking with their teachers. However, this association was stronger for typically developing children than for children with ASD.
- Software simulations of classroom movement indicated the risk of COVID-19 transmission was commensurate with classroom density while an observational study found no evidence of deficits in the duration, rate, or phonemic diversity of the vocalizations of children wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic when compared to children not wearing masks in the same classroom before the pandemic.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Project website:
Publications:
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Select Publications:
Perry, L. K., Mitsven, S. G., Custode, S., Vitale, L., Laursen, B., Song, C., & Messinger, D. S. (2022). Reciprocal patterns of peer speech in preschoolers with and without hearing loss. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 60, 201-213. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2022.02.003
Fasano, R. M., Perry, L. K., Zhang, Y., Vitale, L., Wang, J., Song, C., & Messinger, D.S. (2021). A granular perspective on inclusion: Objectively measured interactions of preschoolers with and without autism. Autism Research.
Mitsven, S.G., Perry, L. K., Tao, Y., Elbaum, B.E. Johnson, N. & Messinger, D. S. (2021). Objectively measured teacher and preschooler vocalizations: Phonemic diversity is associated with language abilities. Developmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13177.
Elbaum, B., Perry, L. K., & Messinger, D. S. (2024). Investigating children’s interactions in inclusive preschool classrooms: An overview of research using automated sensing technologies. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 66, 147-156.
Custode, S., Bailey, J., Sun, L., Katz, L., Ullery, M., Messinger, D., Shearer, R., & Perry, L. (2024). Preschool Language Environments and Social Interactions in an Early Intervention Classroom: A Pilot Study, Journal of Early Intervention, 46(3), 228-355.
Zhang, Y., Tao, Y., Shyu, M.-L., Perry, L. K., Warde, P. R., Messinger, D. S., & Song, C. (2022). Simulating COVID19 transmission from observed movement. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 3044. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-07043-4. arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.07808.
Altman, R., Laursen, B., Messinger, D.M., & Perry, L.K. (2020) Validation of continuous measures of peer social interaction with self- and teacher-reports of friendship and social engagement. European Journal of Developmental Psychology. Doi: 10.1080/17405629.2020.1716724
Messinger, D. S., Perry, L. K., Mitsven, S. G., Tao, Y., Moffitt, J., Fasano, R. M., Custode, S. A., & Jerry, C. M. (in press). Computational Approaches to Understanding Interaction and Development. In Gilmore, R. & Lockman, J. (Eds.), Advances in Child Development and Behavior: New Approaches to Studying Child Development (Vol. 62). Academic Press.
Messinger, D.S., Moffitt., J., Mitsven, S.G., Ahn, Y.A., Custode, S., Chervonenko, E., Sadiq, S., Shyu, M.L., & Perry, L.K., (2022). Early interaction: New approaches. In D. Dukes, A. Samson, E. Walle (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Emotional Development. Oxford University Press.
Available data:
Data from Fasano et al., 2021 (https://osf.io/84fwc/) and Perry et al., 2022 (https://osf.io/2c5g9/) are publicly available on the Open Science Framework. In addition, publicly available computer code for processing project data are available at: https://github.com/lauravitalework?tab=repositories
Additional project information
Video representations of project data are available publicly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT8vkzAC81Q) and, to researchers with verified accounts, in Databrary (https://nyu.databrary.org/volume/987, https://nyu.databrary.org/volume/1381).
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
