For this project my classmates and I conducted research on how interactions between parents and their infants affects speech development. We used Bronfenbrenner's Ecological model to explain how a child's development is impacted by the environment around them. We also used developmental pathology to explain how different children react to their environments in different ways, which in turn affects their development.

1. Cha Cha Hamilton, Makayla Grizzle, Abby Davis, Mary
Madden Pherson, Morgan Wise, Abbey McIntosh
Parental Involvement
in Infant Speech
Development

2. Introduction
Parents play a large role in spurring on and facilitating their child’s speech
development.
● The first three years of life are the most intensive for acquiring language and
speech skills.
● The difference between language and speech (Hartnett, 2019):
○ Language is giving/getting information and being understood through communication.
○ Speech is the verbal expression of language.
● How can parents play a role in positive speech development?
○ Talking with their baby/child, singing songs, imitating gestures, etc.
○ Read to your child.
○ Narrate throughout your day and your actions. Surround them with speech and language.
● Piaget’s sensorimotor and preoperational stages

3. What influences affect
infants cognitive reading
development?
What might cause some infants to develop
slower/faster than others?
Is there a book or a song
that you had a caregiver
share with you multiple
times?
Different Reading Environments

4. Shared reading with preverbal
infants and later language
development
(Muhinyi & Rowe, 2019)
01

5. Methods
Shared reading with preverbal infants and later language
development (Muhinyi & Rowe, 2019)
Parent and child factors
influence reading
interactions, which will
help the child’s language
development
Researchers visited homes
of the families a total of 5
times. During the visits the
following information was
collected or observed:
Family and child factors,
Maternal speech and
gestures during reading,
Child interest during
reading, Child language
skills at 18 months
Hypothesis
Mothers and their 10
month old ranging in
SES status from
Northeast U.S.
3 research questions
Participants:
How do interactions
vary during reading
for the infants?
Are there specific
features that happen at
10 months that predict
language ability later?
Do child and family
factors interact with
specific features of
reading interactions?

6. Shared Reading
● Role of family and child factors:
● Relation between reading
variables and language ability:
Results
Implications
Weaknesses
The only factors that affected
the interaction were maternal
education and sex of the child.
Children later in life will be
more motivated to read if they
were read to as an infant.
Not diverse in ethnicity, small
sample, in a larger sample more of a
correlation between maternal
education and reading may appear
Diverse in SES
longitudinal study
Strengths

7. Parent coaching increases
conversational turns and advances
infant language development
(Ramirez, Lytle, & Kuhl, 2020)
02

8. Parent Coaching
Methods
Hypothesis
Research Question
How can interventions
of parent coaching
have an impact on
language input and the
trajectories on a
child’s vocalizations
and overall language
outcomes?
Intervention will increase
parentese, but not
standard speech and
overall quantity of
speech.
Intervention will enhance
parent child turn taking
Intervention will increase
frequency of a child’s
vocalizations and
enhance child language
outcome at 18 months
71 Families recruited from
multiple SES backgrounds;
only spoke English
Divided into 2 groups: control
and receiving intervention of
parent coaching.
Participants
Placed audio recorders in
the homes of families. At
end of the study gave the
Communicative
Development Inventory
Survey to parents.

9. Parent Coaching
Results
Parents who received
coaching used
parentese and
engaged conversation
turns more, therefore
this supported the
hypotheses.
Implications
Using parentese and
conversational turns
is an effective
parenting strategy to
further a child’s
language
development
Strengths
Recruited
families from
different
socioeconomic
statuses.
Weaknesses
Limited to early
child development
specifically infants
Limited to English
speaking
households

10. Think!
Based on the articles, What theories could
provide some clarity to Parental involvement
in infant speech development?
Can you think of any other theories that we
have not talked about that come to mind?

11. Theories
05
04
Ecological
Model
06
Attachment
Developmental
Psychopathology
Family
Systems
Emotional
Security
Environmental
Sensitivity
01 02 03

12. - Bronfenbrenner's theory states that a child’s development is based on
bidirectional influences between themselves and their environment.
This suggests that interconnections among a child’s immediate
environment and their outer environment plays a crucial role in their
development.
- Bronfenbrenner placed the child in the middle of the model and
divided environment into 5 interrelated systems: the microsystem,
the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem, and the
chronosystem
- Microsystem: child’s immediate environment
- Mesosystem: connection between the different systems
- Exosystem: indirectly influence the child through the microsystems
- Macrosystem: social norms and cultural values
- Chronosystem: time and historical context
Bronfenbrenner: Ecological Systems Theory

13. Bronfenbrenner
Application
- Infant-parent speech interactions relates to
Bronfenbrenner’s theory because it shows how
our microsystem, specifically our parents in this
case, affect us and our development
- Interactions with our immediate environment
have a large impact on our growth and
development
- By increasing their effort to help develop
communication through reading and parentese,
the parents are directly influencing the child’s
speech development

14. Which areas of the
Bronfenbrenner model would be
most affected when looking at child
speech development?

15. Developmental Psychopathology
Home School
Family Activities
- Developmental Psychopathology is
the study of child development
through the effects of normal
development and abnormal
development; it states that every
child faces hardships of some
capacity
- Theory mainly focuses on the
prevention and intervention of
maladaptation
- Uses a scientific approach to study
how children develop in different
environments compared to their
peers

16. Developmental Psychopathology and Infants/children
- Regarding the development of infants and children, research shows that
parents who are seen as ‘provider’, ‘model’, or ‘teacher’ are more likely to
have a strong bond with their children than parents who are seen as
‘director’, ‘coach’, or ‘gatekeeper’ (Holden, 2010).
- A strong bond with parents or caregivers is also connected to eagerness to
learn as well as ease in ability to learn (Holden, 2010).
- Reading books, talking to your baby, narrating your grocery shopping, and
singing songs are all ways to improve the development of your child’s
speech as they grow.

17. Think!
In what ways can
you connect
developmental
psychopathology to
a child’ speech
development?
Discuss with your
table.
How does
developmental
psychopathology help
with a child’s physical
development from
infancy to childhood?
Discuss with your table.

18. Ramirez, N. F., Lytle, S. H., & Kuhl, P. K. (2020). Parent coaching increases conversational
turns and advances infant language development. PNAS, 117(7), 3484-3491.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921653117
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). Context of child rearing: Problems and prospects. American
Psychologist, 34, 844-850.
Hartnett, J. K. (Ed.). (2019, November). Delayed speech or language development (for
parents) - nemours kidshealth. KidsHealth. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from
https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/not-talk.html
Holden, G. W. (2010). Childrearing and developmental trajectories: Positive pathways, off-
ramps, and dynamic processes. Child Development Perspectives 4(3), 197-204.
Muhinyi, A., & Rowe, M. L. (2019). Shared reading with preverbal infants and later language
development. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 64,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2019.101053
Works Cited