Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T14:06:24.233Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Effect of sex and dyad composition on speech and gesture development of singleton and twin children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2021

Sumeyra OZTURK ,
Ebru PINAR ,
F. Nihan KETREZ  and
Şeyda ÖZÇALIŞKAN
Sumeyra OZTURK*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, USA
Ebru PINAR
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, USA
F. Nihan KETREZ
Affiliation:
Department of English Language Teacher Education, İstanbul Bilgi University, Turkey
Şeyda ÖZÇALIŞKAN
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Sumeyra Ozturk, Department of Psychology Georgia State University P.O. Box 5010 Atlanta, GA 30302 Email: hozturk1@student.gsu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children's early vocabulary shows sex differences – with boys having smaller vocabularies than age-comparable girls – a pattern that becomes evident in both singletons and twins. Twins also use fewer words than their singleton peers. However, we know relatively less about sex differences in early gesturing in singletons or twins, and also how singletons and twins might differ in their early gesture use. We examine the patterns of speech and gesture production of singleton and twin children, ages 0;10-to-3;4, during structured parent-child play. Boys and girls – singleton or twin – were similar in speech and gesture production, but singletons used a greater amount and diversity of speech and gestures than twins. There was no effect of twin dyad type (boy-boy, girl-girl, boy-girl) on either speech or gesture production. These results confirm earlier research showing close integration between gesture and speech in singletons in early language development, and further extend these patterns to twin children.

Keywords

twinssingletonslanguage developmentgesture-speech integrationsex differences
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 48 , Special Issue 5: Special issue on Testable Theories of Core First Language Acquisition , September 2021 , pp. 1048 - 1066
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aksu-Koç, A., & Ketrez, F. N. (2003). Early verbal morphology in Turkish: Emergence of inflections. In Bittner, D., Dressler, W. U., & Kilani-Schoch, M. (Eds.), Development of verb inflection in first language acquisition: A cross-linguistic perspective, 21, pp. 27–52. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Bretherton, I., Camaioni, L., & Volterra, V. (1979). Cognition and communication from nine to thirteen months: Correlation findings. The emergence of symbols: Cognition and communication in infancy, pp. 33–68. London: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berglund, E. V. A., Eriksson, M., & Westerlund, M. (2005). Communicative skills in relation to gender, birth order, childcare and socioeconomic status in 18-month-old children. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 46(6), 485–491.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bishop, D. V., & Bishop, S. J. (1998). ‘‘Twin Language’’ A Risk Factor for Language Impairment? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41(1), 150–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butcher, C. (2000). Two-word speech: when hand and mouth come together. Language and Gesture, 2, 235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butterworth, G., & Morisette, P. (1996). Onset of pointing and the acquisition of language in infancy. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 14 (3), 219–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carelli, M. G., & Benelli, B. (1987). Referential Communication Skills in Twin Children, Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society. York, England.Google Scholar
Caselli, M. C. (1990). Communicative gestures and first words. In From gesture to language in hearing and deaf children (pp. 56–67). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choudhury, N., & Benasich, A. A. (2003). A family aggregation study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46(2), 261–272.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colletta, J., Pellenq, C., & Guidetti, M. (2010). Age-related changes in co-speech gesture and narrative: Evidence from French children and adults. Speech Communication, 52, 565–576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conway, D., Lytton, H., & Pysh, F. (1980). Twin–singleton language differences. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, 12(3), 264–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, E. A. (1937). The development of linguistic skills in twins, singletons with siblings, and only children from age five to ten years. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Day, E. J. (1932). The development of language in twins: I. A comparison of twins and single children. Child Development, 3(3), 179–199.Google Scholar
Demir, O. E., Levine, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2015). A tale of two hands: Children's gesture use in narrative production predicts later narrative structure in speech. Journal of Child Language, 42(3), 662–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erguvanlı, E. E. (1984). The function of word order in Turkish grammar (Vol. 106). Univ of California Press.Google Scholar
Eriksson, M., & Berglund, E. (1999). Swedish early communicative development. First Language, 19, 55–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eriksson, M., Marschik, P. B., Tulviste, T., Almgren, M., Pérez Pereira, M., Wehberg, S., & Gallego, C. (2012). Differences between girls and boys in emerging language skills: Evidence from 10 language communities. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 30(2), 326–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D., & Pethick, S. J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59, 1–173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A. (1985). Four-month-old infants prefer to listen to motherese. Infant Behavior and Development, 8(2), 181–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folven, R. J., & Bonvillian, J. D. (1991). The transition from nonreferential to referential language in children acquiring American Sign Language. Developmental Psychology, 27(5), 806–816.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furman, R., Küntay, A. C., & Özyürek, A. (2014). Early language-specificity of children's event encoding in speech and gesture: evidence from caused motion in Turkish. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(5), 620–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galsworthy, M. J., Dionne, G., Dale, P. S., & Plomin, R. (2000). Sex differences in early verbal and non-verbal cognitive development. Developmental Science, 3(2), 206–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garitte, C., Almodovar, J. P., Benjamin, E., & Canhao, C. (2002). Speech in same-and different-sex twins 4 and 5 years old. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 5(6), 538–543.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldin-Meadow, S., Goodrich, W., Sauer, E., & Iverson, J. (2007). Young children use their hands to tell their mothers what to say. Developmental Science, 10(6), 778–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwyn, S. W., & Acredolo, L. P. (1993). Symbolic gesture versus word: Is there a modality advantage for onset of symbol use? Child Development, 64(3), 688–701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gücüyener, K., Arhan, E., Soysal, A. S., Ergenekon, E., Turan, O., Onal, E., Koç, E., Turkyilmaz, C., & Atalay, Y. (2011). Language assessment of non-handicapped twins at 5 years of age. Pediatrics International, 53(6), 944–949.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hay, D. A., & O'Brien, P. J. (1983). The La Trobe Twin Study: A genetic approach to the structure and development of cognition in twin children. Child Development, 54(2), 317–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, J.S., & Linn, M. C. (1988). Gender differences in verbal ability: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 104(1), 53–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iverson, J. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture paves the way for language development. Psychological Science, 16(5), 367–371.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ketrez, F. N. (2016) Different paces (but not different paths) in language acquisition. In Güven, M., Akar, D., Öztürk, B. & Kelepir, M. (eds). Exploring the Turkish Linguistic Landscape: Essays in Honor of Eser Erguvanlı-Taylan. (pp. 183–202). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ketrez, F. N. (2017). Sibling influence on morphological development? In Ketrez, F. N., Küntay, A., Özçalışkan, Ş., Özyürek, A. (Eds) Social Environment and Cognition in Language Development: Studies in Honor of Ayhan Aksu-Koç. Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 21, (pp. 99–110). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Küntay, A., & Slobin, D. I. (1996). Listening to a Turkish mother: Some puzzles for acquisition. In Slobin, D. I., Gerhardt, J., Kyratzis, A., & Guo, J. (Eds.), Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp (p. 265–286). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Lange, B. P., Euler, H. A., & Zaretsky, E. (2016). Sex differences in language competence of 3-to 6-year-old children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(6), 1417–1438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Limia, V. D., Özçalışkan, Ş., & Hoff, E. (2019). Do parents provide a helping hand to vocabulary development in bilingual children? Journal of Child Language, 46, 501–521.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lung, F. W., Shu, B. C., Chiang, T. L., & Lin, S. J. (2009). Twin–singleton influence on infant development: a national birth cohort study. Child: care, health and development, 35(3), 409–418.Google ScholarPubMed
Lytton, H. (2013). Parent-child interaction: The socialization process observed in twin and singleton families. Springer Science & Business Media.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk, Volume II: The database. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Malmstrom, P. M., & Silva, M. N. (1986). Twin talk: Manifestations of twin status in the speech of toddlers. Journal of Child Language, 13(2), 293–304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mcdiarmid, J. M., & Silva, P. A. (1979). Three-year-old twins and singletons: a comparison of some perinatal, environmental, experiential, and developmental characteristics. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 15(4), 243–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nicoladis, E., Mayberry, R. I., & Genesee, F. (1999). Gesture and early bilingual development. Developmental Psychology, 35(2), 514–526.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Neill, M., Bard, K. A., Linnell, M., & Fluck, M. (2005). Maternal gestures with 20-month-old infants in two contexts. Developmental Science, 8(4), 352–359.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Özçalışkan, Ş., Adamson, L. B., Dimitrova, N., & Baumann, S. (2017). Early gesture provides a helping hand to spoken vocabulary development for children with autism, Down syndrome and typical development. Journal of Cognition and Development, 18(3), 325–337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Özçalışkan, Ş., Adamson, L. B., Dimitrova, N., & Baumann, S. (2018). Do Parents Model Gestures Differently When Children's Gestures Differ? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 48(5), 1492–1507.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Özçalışkan, Ş., Gentner, D., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014). Do iconic gestures pave the way for children's early verbs? Applied Psycholinguistics, 35, 1143–1162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Özçalışkan, Ş., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005a). Gesture is at the cutting edge of early language development. Cognition, 96(3), B101-B113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özçalışkan, Ş., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005b). Do parents lead their children by the hand? Journal of Child Language, 32(3), 481–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özçalışkan, Ş., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). Sex differences in language first appear in gesture. Developmental Science, 13(5), 752–760.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Özçalışkan, Ş. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2011). Is there an iconic gesture spurt at 26 months? In Gale, Stam & Mika, Ishino (Eds.), Integrating Gestures: The Interdisciplinary Nature of Gesture (163–174). Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pınar, E., Ozturk, S., Ketrez, F. N., & Özçalışkan, Ş. (2021). Parental Speech and Gesture Input to Girls Versus Boys in Singletons and Twins. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-020-00356-wCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reznick, J. S. (1997). Intelligence, language, nature, and nurture in young twins. In Sternberg, R. J. & Grigorenko, E. L. (Eds.), Intelligence: Heredity and Environment, pp. 483–504. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rice, M. L., Zubrick, S. R., Taylor, C. L., Gayán, J., & Bontempo, D. E. (2014). Late language emergence in 24-month-old twins: Heritable and increased risk for late language emergence in twins. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(3), 917–928.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, M., Thorpe, K., Greenwood, R., Northstone, K., & Golding, J. (2003). Twins as a natural experiment to study the causes of mild language delay: I: Design; twin–singleton differences in language, and obstetric risks. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44(3), 326–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savić, S. (1979). Mother–child verbal interaction: the functioning of completions in the twin situation. Journal of Child Language, 6(1), 153–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savić, S. (1980). How twins learn to talk: A study of the speech development of twins from 1 to 3. Academic Pr.Google Scholar
Stafford, L. (1987). Maternal input to twin and singleton children: Implications for language acquisition. Human Communication Research, 13(4), 429–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stites, L. J., & Özçalışkan, Ş. (2017). Who does what to whom: Children track story referents first in gesture. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 46(4), 1019–1032.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thal, D. J., & Tobias, S. (1992). Communicative gestures in children with delayed onset of oral expressive vocabulary. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 35(6), 1281–1289.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thal, D., Tobias, S., & Morrison, D. (1991). Language and gesture in late talkers: A 1-year follow-up. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 34(3), 604–612.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thorpe, K., Greenwood, R., Eivers, A., & Rutter, M. (2001). Prevalence and developmental course of ‘secret language’. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 36(1), 43–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M., Mannle, S., & Kruger, A. C. (1986). Linguistic environment of 1-to 2-year-old twins. Developmental Psychology, 22(2), 169–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tse, S. K., Chan, C., Li, H., & Kwong, S. M. (2002). Sex differences in syntactic development: Evidence from Cantonese-speaking preschoolers in Hong Kong. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26(6), 509–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar