UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2012 - 20152

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Subject: search.filters.subject.child-directed speech

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    Infant-Directed Speech: Maternal Pitch Variability, Rate of Speech, and Child Language Outcomes
    (2015) Raneri, Daniele Palma; Ratner, Nan B; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Research regarding the influence of specific features typical of infant-directed speech (IDS) and their potential role in facilitating children’s language development is still needed. Very little evidence links features of IDS to specific or general language outcomes. Surprisingly, given their pervasive description, the potential impacts of slowed speech rate and increased pitch variability of IDS on child language outcomes have not been examined. This study asks whether decreased speech rate and increased pitch variability in IDS among 42 mother-infant dyads at 7, 10/11, 18, and 24 months predicts language outcomes at two years. Decreased maternal speech rate at seven months related to increased child expressive language outcomes at two years. Contrary to hypotheses, children who were exposed to IDS characterized by decreased pitch variability at seven months had greater expressive language outcomes at two years than children who were exposed to IDS with increased pitch variability. Possible interpretations and clinical ramifications are discussed.
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    The effects of maternal depression on speech to pre-school children: Implications for language development
    (2012) Miller, Anna; Newman, Rochelle; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    We examined whether a past history of maternal depression affects the manner in which mothers speak to their children, and whether any differences relate to child language development. To do this, we measured acoustic, temporal and content-based speech/language characteristics of 40 pre-school-aged children and mothers with and without a history of depression. Results indicated that children of mothers with a past history of depression exhibited significantly lower vocabulary scores than children of mothers unaffected by depression. However, no maternal speech/language variables appeared to account for this difference. Maternal pitch variability and number of negative utterances both were found to correlate with child vocabulary scores; however, neither variable was found to relate to prior depression status. We discuss possible explanations for these findings and implications for child language development.