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It is a well known fact that communication issues and behavioural problems in children often coexist. However, these two areas of research have often been examined separately in the past. Hayo Terband, university lecturer and researcher specialised in spoken language, wanted to find out more about the causal connection between language and behaviour in cases where the level of language development of a child has been labelled ‘insufficient’. Hayo and his group of fellow researchers from the Social Sciences and other disciplines received a Seed Money Grant in 2016 and went to work. Now the time to analyse the data has arrived.

Data were collected from children between the ages of four and six who were attending an elementary school in Lombok, Utrecht. Brigitta Keij, Assistant Professor in Linguistics and closely involved in this research: "We asked parents and teachers to answer a list of questions on the behaviour of the children in daily life. We asked both parents and teachers to do this, because a child's behaviour at school and at home can be very different." Furthermore, the researchers developed a tablet game to ‘provoke’ communication problems. Terband: "We were inspired by a so-called barrier game that was used to research and treat language problems in the 1980s, which looks a bit like the game Battleship. The results were interesting, but they were eventually forgotten."

Interdisciplinary

The special thing about this project is that several different research disciplines were working together. Contributors from Linguistics included Terband and Keij, as well as Hannah de Mulder, and from the Social Sciences, Loes Janssen, Josje Verhagen and Jolien van der Graaff. Keij: "This combination turned out to be essential when it came to closely observing the interplay between communication and behaviour."

Lose versus loose

The research covered several different aspects: sound distinction, sentence processing, practical language situations and the children's vocabulary. Keij: "During the game, the children might hear, for example, “lose” and “loose”. We studied how children perceived these words. They should be able to hear the subtle differences to be able to make the right game choice, but also be able to understand subtleties like irony."

Less language skills, more problematic behaviour?

"We chose a school that is attended by some children who are being raised bilingually," Keij adds. "This way, we could also find out whether a child was showing more problematic behaviour in the language it was less skilled in. That allowed us to separate the child’s personality from the relation between language and behaviour." The behavioural reaction of the child to the game was registered via a coding system developed in-house by the junior researcher. Keij: "These reactions ranged from happy behaviour, negative internalising behaviour like sadness, negative externalising behaviour like anger and frustration, to nervous behaviour. Amongst other things, we found a correlation between the child’s reaction to the game and his or her behaviour: the more problems the child had understanding linguistic challenges during the game, the more anger and frustration were shown by the child."

Terband adds: "This does not mean that children who ran into fewer problems during the game were showing more positive behaviour. But more language problems do lead to a higher intensity of externalising behaviour. This might seem obvious, but it has never been tested in this way before. An interesting subject for future research is whether we can also actually limit certain types of communication problems."

Relevant perspectives combined

The two researchers agree fully that there is enough cause for further research and that interesting connections have been made thanks to funding from the Seed Money Grant. "Without it, this highly relevant combination would never have been made."

Which journal?

The researchers are now trying to decide which scientific journal to submit the research to. Terband: "It is difficult to find the right environment for this type of interdisciplinary research in the publishing sector. The choices are either social scientific journals, or linguistics journals. We are currently hoping to be published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology."

Dynamics of Youth

'The Interplay Between Communication and Behaviour' is a Dynamics of Youth seed money project. Within this research theme, researchers from different disciplines integrate their expertise to answer crucial questions for future generations. How can we help our children develop into balanced individuals, that are able to function successfully in a rapidly changing environment? As one of Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��'s four strategic themes, Dynamics of Youth combines excellent child research from all seven faculties.