Parent–Child Joint Behaviors in Novel Object Play Create High-Quality Data for Word Learning
Open accessAbstract
This research takes a dyadic approach to study early word learning and focuses on toddlers' (N = 20, age: 17-23 months) information seeking and parents' information providing behaviors and the ways the two are coupled in real-time parent-child interactions. Using head-mounted eye tracking, this study provides the first detailed comparison of children's and their parents' behavioral and attentional patterns in two free-play contexts: one with novel objects with to-be-learned names (Learning condition) and the other with familiar objects with known names (Play condition). Children and parents in the Learning condition modified their individual and joint behaviors when encountering novel objects with to-be-learned names, which created clearer signals that reduced referential ambiguity and potentially facilitated word learning.
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Touching of a named object by the caregiver increases the duration of children's looks at the toy.
“Recently, Chen et al. (2021) showed that touching of a named object by the caregiver increases the duration of children's looks at the toy.”
From The role of dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' verbal and multimodal responses in predicting vocabulary outcomes (2025) · cites this paper as Chen et al. (2021)
The Results section, “Synchrony between Parents’ Naming and Children’s Attention,” reports that parents’ touch of a named object significantly extended children’s looks in the Learning condition. It found no significant effect in the Play condition, a limitation the citing sentence omits. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredCaregivers' multimodal responses could increase the duration of children's looks at the toy (i.e., enhance attention).
“Lastly, a recent study suggests that caregivers' multimodal responses could increase the duration of children's looks at the toy (i.e., enhance attention) (Chen et al., 2021).”
From The role of dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' verbal and multimodal responses in predicting vocabulary outcomes (2025) · cites this paper as Chen et al., 2021
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
van der Klis, A., Adriaans, F., & Kager, R. (2023) · Infant Behavior and Development · doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2023.101828 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
van der Klis, A., Junge, C., Adriaans, F., & Kager, R. (2025) · Infancy · doi:10.1111/infa.12626 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“Recently, Chen et al. (2021) showed that touching of a named object by the caregiver increases the duration of children's looks at the toy.”
- Authors
- Chen, C.-H., Houston, D. M., & Yu, C.
- Affiliations
- The Ohio State University (US)
- Nationwide Children's Hospital (US)
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Corresponding author
- Chen, Chi-hsin
- Venue
- Child Development
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2021-09-01
- Volume
- 92
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1889-1905
- ISSN
- 0009-3920 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-8624
- PMC
- PMC8478720
- OpenAlex
- W3196734832
- Cited by
- 38
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 6
- FWCI
- 9.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- Child Development (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- PEARL (University of Plymouth) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- PEARL (University of Plymouth) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (R01 DC017925, R01 HD074601, R01 HD093792)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Keywords
- word learning, parent-child interaction, joint attention, toddlers, information seeking, referential ambiguity, free play, eye tracking, dyadic interaction
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Humans, Infant, Learning, Parent-Child Relations, Parents, Verbal Learning
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