Babillage et diversification alimentaire : pratiques et influence de l'exposition aux textures sur le contrôle oro-moteur
During the first years of life, the child gradually moves from an exclusively milk diet to a family diet through a period of complementary feeding. It is also during this period that babbling and mastication appear. They are both associated with the emergence of mandibular rhythmic oscillations (MacNeilage, 1998). This common motor gesture and the co-occurrence of eating disorders and speech / language disorders suggest a link between the development of speech and eating activities. To date, only few studies described the characteristics of the early development of these two activities, and there are also very few that have tried to verify this link experimentally. This PhD project aims to meet these two goals. The first part of our work pursue the objective of describing the feeding behavior of young French children during complementary feeding period and to compare them with the recommendations of public health organizations (WHO, Inpes). A parental questionnaire entitled "Inventaire des Conduites Alimentaires" was created and allowed to examine the modalities of introduction of complementary foods, including those of textures, in a sample of 806 French typically developing children. The second part of our work aims to test the link between babbling and chewing in two studies. Using acoustic and video data we first examined longitudinally the developmental trajectories of syllabic and masticatory temporal patterns between 8 and 14 months in 4 Quebecers children. Afterwards, we analyzed the characteristics of these temporal patterns in 14 French 10 months old children according to the development of communicative gestures and the type of textures consumed. The results show an average age of food transition between 4 and 5 months and a sequential introduction of textures during dietary diversification. Moreover, the trajectories of the syllabic and masticatory patterns obtained suggest on the one hand an overall improvement of the oro-motor control between 10 and 12 months, and on the other hand that the syllabic temporal patterns would be influenced by the type of textures to which the child is regularly exposed. These observations thus give rise to arguments for the existence of a one-sided interdependence between speech and feeding activities at an early stage of development.
mastication textures babbling chewing temporal patterns complementary feeding period textures