Publication Date

Spring 2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Communicative Disorders and Sciences

Advisor

Janet Bang; Danielle Mead; Marcella McCollum

Abstract

Understanding the natural productions of children's early expressive language development is important to support their development. These natural productions may also be especially complex in children with diverse linguistic backgrounds. A challenge for clinicians is how to assess these natural productions for children’s early expressive language milestones. For example, what does it mean for children to say the same word in two languages and refer to the same concept (e.g., “water” and “agua”)? Or refer to two different concepts, (e.g., “water” and “leche” (milk))? By understanding how children’s expressive language connects to conceptual understanding, clinicians can better support language learning. We examined children’s natural production of early words through caregivers’ language observations of children (n = 31, 12 - 26 months) from diverse linguistic backgrounds (e.g., English-Spanish, English-Korean). Language observations were collected daily (~ 2x/day, 5 days, 5 weeks) from a novel text-delivered survey. Descriptive data of the top 10 concepts demonstrated many different linguistic, cultural, and social aspects of early language acquisition when looking both across and within language backgrounds. Caregivers' reports of children’s natural language observations also generally aligned with age expectations on ASHA milestones by using concepts. We discuss how this data can help inform an approach to clinician-family engagement for early intervention with children, which will help clinicians work in partnership with families to better understand how to apply early expressive language milestones for their individual children.

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