What is it about?
The language children hear from their parents is an important driver of language development. Previous studies have focused on what parents say -- how much they talk and the words they use. In this study we found that the timing of mothers' responses -- the gaps between conversational turns -- also predicts children's language abilities. Mothers who respond with consistent (less variable) timing tend to have children with higher vocabulary scores.
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Why is it important?
Most studies of language input to children have focussed on the content and quality of the words and language that children encounter. These are important predictors of how children develop and of group differences in language outcome (i.e., in children from low socioeconomic status families). This study shifts the focus from "what" mothers are saying to their children, to the timing of back-and-forth dialogue between mothers and their children. Dialogue typically shows precise timing between conversational turns. We minimize silent gaps, while avoiding overlapping speech. This study shows that "when" mothers respond also predicts language ability. Mother with less variably timed response had children with stronger vocabulary scores. These timing effects expand the story about what matters in children's language experience. Predictably timed responses, may help children learn more easily from the words they hear. They may also provide a measure of how responsive, or in-sync, the mother is to the child.
Perspectives
This study makes use of recordings of mother-child interaction from a really large and rich longitudinal dataset from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project -- a sample of families in which children are at-risk for developmental and academic delays. Our own research extracted additional information from this dataset by performing acoustical analysis of mother-child dialogue (with the help of a small army of dedicated students in the lab). I personally find it fascinating that really small differences (i..e, milliseconds) in dialogue timing can help us understand parent- children interaction and relationships, in a way that is predictive of meaningful differences in child development.
Nicholas Smith
University of Missouri Columbia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The “what” and “when” of language input to children: Linguistic and temporal predictors of vocabulary in 3-year-olds., Developmental Psychology, August 2024, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/dev0001819.
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