The DOI matches its Crossref record; 83 of the 83 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
How diverse is child language acquisition research?
Open accessAbstract
A comprehensive theory of child language acquisition requires an evidential base that is representative of the typological diversity present in the world’s 7000 or so languages. However, languages are dying at an alarming rate, and the next 50 years represents the last chance we have to document acquisition in many of them. Here, we take stock of the last 45 years of research published in the four main child language acquisition journals: Journal of Child Language, First Language, Language Acquisition and Language Learning and Development. We coded each article for several variables, including (1) participant group (mono vs multilingual), (2) language(s), (3) topic(s) and (4) country of author affiliation, from each journal’s inception until the end of 2020. We found that we have at least one article published on around 103 languages, representing approximately 1.5% of the world’s languages. The distribution of articles was highly skewed towards English and other well-studied Indo-European languages, with the majority of non-Indo-European languages having just one paper. A majority of the papers focused on studies of monolingual children, although papers did not always explicitly report participant group status. The distribution of topics across language categories was more even. The number of articles published on non-Indo-European languages from countries outside of North America and Europe is increasing; however, this increase is driven by research conducted in relatively wealthy countries. Overall, the vast majority of the research was produced in the Global North. We conclude that, despite a proud history of crosslinguistic research, the goals of the discipline need to be recalibrated before we can lay claim to truly a representative account of child language acquisition.
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“research on neurodegenerative conditions has neglected most of the world's 7000 languages.”
From Speech and language markers of neurodegeneration: a call for global equity (2023) · cites this paper as [77]
Citations
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“A key feature of natural languages is their vast diversity, which is evident at every level of analysis (Evans & Levinson, 2009).”
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science
Blasi, D. E., Henrich, J., Adamou, E., Kemmerer, D., & Majid, A. (2022) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015 · Cited by 396
“Crucially, this diversity is relevant not only for the language sciences (e.g., [3,7]) but also for the broader study of cognitive science, as differences in language”
Singh, L., Cristià, A., Karasik, L. B., Rajendra, S. J., & Oakes, L. M. (2023) · Infancy · doi:10.1111/infa.12545 · Cited by 142
“In this way, infant language experience, although rarely reported (Kidd & Garcia, 2022), can have far-reaching effects on basic behaviors that form the methodological back-bone of the field (see Byers-Heinlein et al., 2019 for a discussion of this issue).”
Speech and language markers of neurodegeneration: a call for global equity
García, A. M., de Leon, J., Tee, B. L., Blasi, D. E., & Gorno-Tempini, M. L. (2023) · Brain · doi:10.1093/brain/awad253 · Cited by 102
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“At the same time, we acknowledge that significant gaps remain in the availability of CDIs across the world’s languages (Kidd and Garcia, 2022).”
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“D” samples, Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010; Kidd & Garcia, 2022; Nielsen, Haun, Kärtner, & Legare, 2017).”
Metadata
- Authors
- Kidd, E., & Garcia, R.
- Affiliations
- Australian National University (AU)
- University of Potsdam (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Kidd, Evan
- Venue
- First Language
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2022-01-28
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 703-735
- ISSN
- 0142-7237 (ISSN-L)
- 1740-2344
- OpenAlex
- W4225079082
- Cited by
- 283
- References
- 83
- Citations by year
- 2026: 49 · 2025: 93 · 2024: 54 · 2023: 54 · 2022: 32
- FWCI
- 88.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- First Language (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- publish.UP (University of Potsdam) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Australian Research Council (CE140100041)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Linguistics and Language Studies
- Keywords
- child language acquisition, typological diversity, language documentation, endangered languages, multilingualism, Indo-European languages, Global North bias, research representativeness, linguistic typology
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