Nan Bernstein Ratner
Biographic Data
| ID | 750510 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nan Bernstein Ratner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nan Bernstein |
| FAMILY NAME | Ratner |
| SIGNATURE | RATNER N B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Maryland, College Park |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9947-0656 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Advances in Understanding Stuttering as a Disorder of Language Encoding
We review accumulating evidence that implicates the language encoding and production system in children and adults who stutter. Stuttering is unique in its onset during the most dynamic stages of language acquisition, after apparently successful mastery of early language skills. We review older theories of stuttering that have given way to an understanding of stuttering's underlying bases in cortical and subcortical networks. Behavioral data sugg…
Change in maternal speech rate to preverbal infants over the first two years of life
Aims: Although IDS is typically described as slower than adult-directed speech (ADS), potential impacts of slower speech on language development have not been examined. We explored whether IDS speech rates in 42 mother–infant dyads at four time periods predicted children's language outcomes at two years. Method: We correlated IDS speech rate with child language outcomes at two years, and contrasted outcomes in dyads displaying high/low rate profi…
Segmentability Differences Between Child-Directed and Adult-Directed Speech
Previous computational modeling suggests it is much easier to segment words from child-directed speech (CDS) than adult-directed speech (ADS). However, this conclusion is based on data collected in the laboratory, with CDS from play sessions and ADS between a parent and an experimenter, which may not be representative of ecologically collected CDS and ADS. Fully naturalistic ADS and CDS collected with a nonintrusive recording device as the child …
Infant-directed speech (IDS) vowel clarity and child language outcomes
There have been many studies examining the differences between infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS). However, investigations asking whether mothers clarify vowel articulation in IDS have reached equivocal findings. Moreover, it is unclear whether maternal speech clarification has any effect on a child's developing language skills. This study examined vowel clarification in mothers’ IDS at 0;10–11, 1;6, and 2;0, as compared…
Input and uptake at 7 months predicts toddler vocabulary
Both the input directed to the child, and the child's ability to process that input, are likely to impact the child's language acquisition. We explore how these factors inter-relate by tracking the relationships among: (a) lexical properties of maternal child-directed speech to prelinguistic (7-month-old) infants (N = 121); (b) these infants' abilities to segment lexical targets from conversational child-directed utterances in an experimental par…
Infants' early ability to segment the conversational speech signal predicts later language development
Two studies examined relationships between infants' early speech processing performance and later language and cognitive outcomes. Study 1 found that performance on speech segmentation tasks before 12 months of age related to expressive vocabulary at 24 months. However, performance on other tasks was not related to 2-year vocabulary. Study 2 assessed linguistic and cognitive skills at 4-6 years of age for children who had participated in segmenta…
Interactive influences on phonological behaviour
An infant girl's unusual phonological behaviour was evaluated in the light of a maternai model which appeared to exaggerate features of normal conversational speech. It is suggested that parental responses to immature speech patterns may account for selected case study behaviours which have been reported in both the child phonology and child fluency literatures. It appears that evaluation of phonological development within an interactive framewor…
Patterns of parental vocabulary selection in speech to very young children
Previous studies have suggested that paternal vocabulary selection in speech to young children may be more diverse or demanding than that of mothers. This study examined the speech of eight mothers and eight fathers to their young language learning children. Nominal usage was subjected to TTR and frequency-of-occurrence analyses. In general, while paternal speech does not appear to be more diverse than maternal speech, it does appear to be charac…
Durational cues which mark clause boundaries in mother-child speech
Higher pitch in BT is not universal
Although higher pitch has been described as a universal feature of babytalk (BT) registers worldwide, analysis of a sample of three Quiche Mayan-speaking mothers addressing their infant children indicated that their BT register does not utilize this feature. Quiche mothers either make no pitch distinction in speech to young children, or actually lower pitch slightly in comparison with their Adult–Adult interaction style. A comparison group of Ame…
Patterns of vowel modification in mother–child speech
Patterns of vowel articulation in conversational speech to an adult and to child listeners were analysed in the speech of nine mothers. Formant frequency analysis of vowels embedded in 2,406 words found in varying syntactic environments and uttered by women to pre-verbal, holophrastic and more advanced child listeners (MLUs 2·5–4·0) revealed an emerging pattern of content word clarification, as measured by wider dispersion and decreased overlap b…
Phonological rule usage in mother-child speech
Cues to post-vocalic voicing in mother-child speech
Infants' early ability to segment the conversational speech signal predicts later language development
Two studies examined relationships between infants' early speech processing performance and later language and cognitive outcomes. Study 1 found that performance on speech segmentation tasks before 12 months of age related to expressive vocabulary at 24 months. However, performance on other tasks was not related to 2-year vocabulary. Study 2 assessed linguistic and cognitive skills at 4-6 years of age for children who had participated in segmenta…
Phonological rule usage in mother-child speech
Durational cues which mark clause boundaries in mother-child speech
Cues to post-vocalic voicing in mother-child speech
Higher pitch in BT is not universal
Although higher pitch has been described as a universal feature of babytalk (BT) registers worldwide, analysis of a sample of three Quiche Mayan-speaking mothers addressing their infant children indicated that their BT register does not utilize this feature. Quiche mothers either make no pitch distinction in speech to young children, or actually lower pitch slightly in comparison with their Adult–Adult interaction style. A comparison group of Ame…
Patterns of vowel modification in mother–child speech
Patterns of vowel articulation in conversational speech to an adult and to child listeners were analysed in the speech of nine mothers. Formant frequency analysis of vowels embedded in 2,406 words found in varying syntactic environments and uttered by women to pre-verbal, holophrastic and more advanced child listeners (MLUs 2·5–4·0) revealed an emerging pattern of content word clarification, as measured by wider dispersion and decreased overlap b…
Phonological rule usage in mother-child speech
Cues to post-vocalic voicing in mother-child speech
Durational cues which mark clause boundaries in mother-child speech
Patterns of parental vocabulary selection in speech to very young children
Previous studies have suggested that paternal vocabulary selection in speech to young children may be more diverse or demanding than that of mothers. This study examined the speech of eight mothers and eight fathers to their young language learning children. Nominal usage was subjected to TTR and frequency-of-occurrence analyses. In general, while paternal speech does not appear to be more diverse than maternal speech, it does appear to be charac…
Interactive influences on phonological behaviour
An infant girl's unusual phonological behaviour was evaluated in the light of a maternai model which appeared to exaggerate features of normal conversational speech. It is suggested that parental responses to immature speech patterns may account for selected case study behaviours which have been reported in both the child phonology and child fluency literatures. It appears that evaluation of phonological development within an interactive framewor…
Infants' early ability to segment the conversational speech signal predicts later language development
Two studies examined relationships between infants' early speech processing performance and later language and cognitive outcomes. Study 1 found that performance on speech segmentation tasks before 12 months of age related to expressive vocabulary at 24 months. However, performance on other tasks was not related to 2-year vocabulary. Study 2 assessed linguistic and cognitive skills at 4-6 years of age for children who had participated in segmenta…
Input and uptake at 7 months predicts toddler vocabulary
Both the input directed to the child, and the child's ability to process that input, are likely to impact the child's language acquisition. We explore how these factors inter-relate by tracking the relationships among: (a) lexical properties of maternal child-directed speech to prelinguistic (7-month-old) infants (N = 121); (b) these infants' abilities to segment lexical targets from conversational child-directed utterances in an experimental par…
Infant-directed speech (IDS) vowel clarity and child language outcomes
There have been many studies examining the differences between infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS). However, investigations asking whether mothers clarify vowel articulation in IDS have reached equivocal findings. Moreover, it is unclear whether maternal speech clarification has any effect on a child's developing language skills. This study examined vowel clarification in mothers’ IDS at 0;10–11, 1;6, and 2;0, as compared…
Segmentability Differences Between Child-Directed and Adult-Directed Speech
Previous computational modeling suggests it is much easier to segment words from child-directed speech (CDS) than adult-directed speech (ADS). However, this conclusion is based on data collected in the laboratory, with CDS from play sessions and ADS between a parent and an experimenter, which may not be representative of ecologically collected CDS and ADS. Fully naturalistic ADS and CDS collected with a nonintrusive recording device as the child …
Change in maternal speech rate to preverbal infants over the first two years of life
Aims: Although IDS is typically described as slower than adult-directed speech (ADS), potential impacts of slower speech on language development have not been examined. We explored whether IDS speech rates in 42 mother–infant dyads at four time periods predicted children's language outcomes at two years. Method: We correlated IDS speech rate with child language outcomes at two years, and contrasted outcomes in dyads displaying high/low rate profi…
Advances in Understanding Stuttering as a Disorder of Language Encoding
We review accumulating evidence that implicates the language encoding and production system in children and adults who stutter. Stuttering is unique in its onset during the most dynamic stages of language acquisition, after apparently successful mastery of early language skills. We review older theories of stuttering that have given way to an understanding of stuttering's underlying bases in cortical and subcortical networks. Behavioral data sugg…
Psychology (13 works) · Linguistics (12 works) · Developmental psychology (10 works) · Language Development and Disorders (9 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (9 works) · Language development (7 works) · Artificial Intelligence (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works)