Infants who experience more adult ‐initiated conversations have better expressive language in toddlerhood

AbstractTo understand how infants become engaged in conversations with their caregivers, we examinedwho tends to initiate conversations between adults and infants, differences between the features of infant- and adult-initiated conversations, and whether individual differences in how much infants engage in infant- or adult-initiated conversations uniquely predict later language development. We analyzed naturalistic adult –infant conversations captured via passive recording of the daily environment in two samples of 6-month-old infants. In Study 1, we found that at age 6 months, infants typically engage in more adult- than infant-initiated conversations and that adult-initiated conversations are, on average, longe r and contain more adult words. In Study 2, we replicated these findings and, further, found that infants who engaged in moreadult-initiated conversations in infancy had better expressive language at age 18  months. This association remained significant when accounting for the number ofinfant-initiated conversations at 6  months. Our findings indicate that early interactions with caregivers can have a lasting impact on children's language development, and that the extent to which parents initiate interactions with their infants may be particularly important.
Source: Infancy - Category: Child Development Authors: Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research