Childs Real Time Referential Processing Development

Introduction Language processing has been a largely studied area of research over the past _ years. More recently, studies have looked into real-time referential processing abilities in children in order to understand how processing works as well as what contributes to levels of efficiency. Some factors that effect proficiency of this ability includes exposure to infant-directed speech, onset of exposure to first language, socioeconomic status, as well as various individual differences such as language impairments and/or deafness. This paper strives to collect supporting ideas of what factors contribute to a child’s real time referential processing development. Exposure to Language In some cultures, around the world, it is common to†¦show more content†¦The findings support that experiencing language fosters development of vocabulary through positively influenced processing efficiency. It has also been seen that children from higher socioeconomic status families show greater interaction and exposure to language which leads to larger vocabularies as well as efficient real-time processing (Fernald, A., Marchman, V. A., Weisleder, A., 2013). Ultimately, children who are more exposed to speech are able to interpret words, create mental lexicon representations leading them to be able to familiarize with words quicker and with better accuracy during speech in real-time. This ability later shows rapid growth in vocabulary. (Weisleder et al., 2013) The looking-while-listening test is a good resource, however in some cases this test cannot be used. Such reasons arise in the assessment of deaf children that heavily rely on ASL signs as their primary tool for communication. Spoken language learning processes require visual and auditory modalities where as comprehension and processing of sign language requires visual attention to real world referents as well as attention to visual linguistic signs (Lieberman et al., 2015). Lieberman et al. (2015) at the University of California looked at real time processing in ASL signs and finds evidence to support that when deaf children are exposed to ASL from birth, they are developing sub lexical features within their