Mothers' Speech and Maternal Vocal Imitation as Reinforcers of Infant Vocalizations: A Program of Research is the kind of topic that looks straightforward until it collides with the speed, ambiguity, and competing demands of clinic sessions and day-to-day service delivery. In Mothers' Speech and Maternal Vocal Imitation as Reinforcers of Infant Vocalizations: A Program of Research, for this course, the practical stakes show up in stronger conceptual consistency and better translational decision making, not in abstract discussion alone.
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Join Free →Caregivers interact with their young infants using parentese (speech consisting of infant-directed "baby" talk using words and sentences in high-pitched tones, a songlike rhythm, and inflections on verbs and nouns) and vocal imitation. This contingent stimulation often makes a key difference in their child's language acquisition. Previous research (Pelaez et al., 2011, Pelaez et al., 2018) has demonstrated that mothers' speech and vocal imitation have reinforcing effects that increase the frequency of vocalizations in infants. Mothers take the active role in their children's language development. This symposium will report two studies: the first experiment uses a modified withdrawal design (ABCDE) to explore whether the language in which contingent mothers' speech is delivered to a six-month-old Hispanic infant in a bilingual household affects the frequency of vocalizations produced. The second experiment uses an alternating treatment design (ABCBC) to compare the effects of contingent adult vocal imitation and infant-directed speech on the frequency of infant vocalizations in an eight-month-old typically developing female infant and a 12-month-old atypically development male infant. These two studies add to the existing body of research describing the effects that the language environments that infants are exposed to at home have on their linguistic development.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1.5 | General |
Martha Pelaez is a Professor of Psychology at the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education, School of Human Development, Florida International University.Dr. Pelaez teaches courses in Educational Psychology, Child Development, Research & Evaluation, and directs infant and early childhood research. Her research has been supported by NIH and March of Dimes. Dr. Pelaez research involves mother-infant interactions and early social–learning processes, as well design applied intervention with children at risk of developmental delays, depression, and early autism. Dr. Pelaez has published more than 100 articles in refereed journals (including the American Psychologist, Child Development, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavior Analysis in Practice, and Perspectives on Behavior Science), dozens of chapters and monographs, and a textbook on Child Development (with Novak). Professor Pelaez is the founding editor of the Behavior Development Bulletin (1990-2017) and has been a member of nine editorial boards of refereed journals, including the European Journal of Behavior Analysis and Perspectives on Behavior Science. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and has received Fellowship status at the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI). She is a trustee of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and serves as an At-Large Representative on the Executive Council Board of ABAI and member of the Science Board of ABAI.
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256 research articles with practitioner takeaways
239 research articles with practitioner takeaways
239 research articles with practitioner takeaways
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