A longitudinal investigation of the role of quantity and quality of child-directed speech in vocabulary development.

“While it is acknowledged that some of this variability is likely due to genetics (see Stromswold, 2001, for a review), environmental factors also play an integral role (see Hoff, 2006, for a review).”

“are not the most commonly used in the English language in preschool impacts later vocabulary knowledge (Rowe, 2012; Weizman & Snow, 2001).”

“Some researchers attributed the ‘null effect’ to mothers’ L2 speech properties, as high proficiency mothers were consistently found to possess a bigger vocabulary size (Bialystok 2009) and use more diverse and difficult words with their children (Hoff, Core, and Shanks 2020; Rowe 2012).”

“Rare words are not just novelties; they can predict language learning: The number of different rare words children hear at 2.5 years old predicts vocabulary at 3.5 years old, even controlling for overall quantity of parent speech (Rowe, 2012).”

“Based on studies on maternal language input (Hoff, 2003; Huttenlocher et al., 2010; Rowe, 2012), we hypothesized that in the daily parenting context, inductive reasoning, which relies on parents’ verbally rich and sophisticated explanations of cause–effect relations, could be a stronger predictor…”

“The critical nature of creative storytelling with parents lies in the fact that it facilitates high-quality interactions, which support children’s language fluency, social and communication skills, and emotional understanding [9, 21].”

“…using diverse and sophisticated vocabulary best supports language development for toddlers, and use of decontextualized language about topics removed from the here and now (e.g., narrative, pretend, and explanations) best support preschool language development (Jones & Rowland, 2017; Rowe, 2012).”

“…their ability to read at third grade, which is a key predictor of their academic trajectory in the long term: children who cannot read at grade level by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school (Dickenson and Porche, 2011; Head Zauche et al., 2016; Rowe, 2012).”

“Further, variability in the input directed at children goes beyond that predicted by SES (Rowe, 2012), 740 Gatt et al.”

“, 2007) and face-to-face communication with adults or peers (Rowe, 2012; Sosa, 2016).”

“Furthermore, research also shows that access to input variability seems fundamental for young learners, in order for them to acquire the patterns and rules of the language they are exposed to (Perry et al., 2010; Rowe, 2012; Jones and Rowland, 2017; Serrat et al., 2021; Kartushina et al., 2022).”

“are associated with well-known “word gaps” in children’s vocabulary size (Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003; Rowe, 2012).”

“Even now, with our already large knowledge base (see Hoff, 2006 and Rowe, 2012 for reviews), new insights continue to emerge.”

“Consistent with this idea, varying aspects of parent input relate to language skills at varying points in development (Rowe, 2012), and it may be that the role of labels in different engagement states change with the child’s abilities as well.”

“In the context of language development, where exposure to language has been found to contribute to children’s own language skills (Rowe, 2012; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013), increased exposure to noise may disrupt the processes through which children learn language, which in turn may be associated…”

“Given the positive relation between caregivers’ lexical diversity and monolingual children’s language skills at 24 months of age (Rowe, 2012), we obtained caregiver reports of bilingual children’s productive vocabulary skills at 24 months.”

“Indeed, the quality of language environments (i.e., vocabulary diversity and syntactic complexity) is more strongly related to language skills than pure quantity of number of words heard (e.g., Anderson et al., 2021; Rowe, 2012).”

“As a result, referential language supports infants’ vocabulary, grammar, and speech processing skills, which in turn predict cognitive and language outcomes later in childhood (Bornstein, Haynes, & Painter, 1998; Fernald, Perfors, & Marchman, 2006; Hoff, 2006; Hoff & Naigles, 2002; Hurtado, Marchman, & Fernald, 2008;…”

“Books also tend to contain a wider variety of complex sentence structures, many of which are absent in everyday speech to children; and exposure to these benefits older preschoolers’ language development (from age 3 years and upwards; see e.g. Rowe, 2012).”

“…earlier, maternal language input, which is strongly associated with maternal education and socio-economic status (SES), predicts early language skills and subsequent language outcomes (Hoff, 2003; Huttenlocher et al., 2010; Rowe, 2012; Vernon-Feagans, Bratsch-Hines, Reynolds, & Willoughby, 2020).”

“In some cases, the association between SES and language may reflect the nature of the language spoken at home: children from lower SES families tend to be exposed to a reduced quantity and diversity of talk (Rowe, 2012).”

“Even within North American children of the same age, exposed to the same language, there is large variability in the type and quantity of speech-language exposure such as the number of word types [1], ratio of male to female speech input [2], and phonetic realization of consonants and vowels [3, 4].”

“Finally, research on the development of expressive vocabulary and other language skills has demonstrated that factors such as child–caregiver interactions and amount of language stimulation influence expressive vocabulary and language development (e.g., Huttenlocher et al., 1991; National Institute of Child Health and…”

“…and learner-related factors are crucial for L1 development; examples of such factors include quantity and quality of child-directed speech (e.g., Rowe, 2012), verbal short-term memory (e.g., Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989; Gathercole, Service, Hitch, Adams, & Martin, 1999), and SES (e.g., Hoff,…”

“Furthermore, characteristics of maternal verbal interactive style that facilitate growth at one age might be irrelevant at another (Masur et al., 2005; Rowe, 2012; Soderstrom, 2007).”

“…and grammatical constructions, in facilitating language growth (Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Cymerman, & Levine, 2002; Pan, Rowe, Singer, & Snow, 2005; Rowe, 2012), and the benefits of shared book reading and other activities that elicit more complex speech (Raikes et al., 2006; Weigel, Martin, &…”

“…considering past work has shown that parental input in fl uences language ability more broadly for all children, including those with ASD [e.g., Bang & Nadig, 2015; Fusaroli, Weed, Fein, & Naigles, 2019; Hoff & Naigles, 2002; Rowe, 2012; Venker et al., 2015; Warren et al., 2010; Wolchik, 1983].”

“, 2015), with the left perisylvian cortical regions that underlie language processes to partially account for SES disparities in vocabulary (Romeo et al., 2012).”

“…the existence of group differences in maternal education is important to consider in the context of evidence about impacts of socioeconomic background on children’s language outcomes (e.g. Hart & Risley, 2003; Hoff, 2013; Romeo et al., 2018; Rowe, 2012; but see DudleyMarling & Lucas, 2009).”

“Lexical diversity in children’s input, above and beyond quantity, results in stronger outcomes for just about every area of language development (Huttenlocher et al., 2010; Rowe, 2012).”

“For instance, parents and children in a diverse range of cultures reminisce about their memories of personal experiences (see Miller et al., 1990), and these memory conversations increase in frequency over the early childhood period (Rowe, 2012).”

“There is, thus, clearly a need to examine the effects of narrative-based interventions in promoting broad oral language skills in preschoolers coming from low SES backgrounds that generally present low oral language skills [11,48].”

“The more the utterances, word tokens, and different word types parents provide, the larger the children’s receptive and expressive vocabularies tend to be (e.g., Hurtado, Marchman, & Fernald, 2008; Rowe, 2008, 2012; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013).”

“These interactive activities between parents and children in the HLE have been shown to positively impact the child’s language size (Carroll et al., 2019; Medawar et al., 2023; Rowe, 2012).”

“The frequency of such utterances has been shown to predict children’s vocabulary knowledge and narrative skills (Reese, 1995; Rowe, 2013, 2012; Sparks & Reese, 2012), even up to mid-adolescence, as has been shown recently by Uccelli et al. (2019).”

“Nonetheless, as has been well documented regarding other features of language input (Fernald et al., 2012; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2013; Rowe, 2008, 2012), the regression analysis identified SES significant differences: middle SES interlocutors employed a greater proportion of words and…”

“…reading comprehension, phonological processing, and working memory, across and within SES strata (Burchinal et al., 2020; Chiat & Polišenská, 2016; Dolean et al., 2019; Engel et al., 2008; Evans & Schamberg, 2009; Hoff, 2013; Hoff, 2003; Molfese et al., 2003; Rowe, 2012; Rowe & Weisleder, 2020).”

“Similar to the transcribing approach that Rowe (2012) took when studying parent-child verbal interaction, each “instructional unit” in this study consisted of one or multiple connected communication unit (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005) that focused on teaching literacy concepts or guiding children’s…”

“Email: k.j.topping@dundee.ac.uk Rowe (2012) examined the quantity and quality of caregiver input longitudinally in a sample of 50 parent–child dyads, to determine which aspects of input contributed most to children’s vocabulary skill.”

“…during the first years of life has an effect on semantic, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic aspects of linguistic development in children (Hart and Risley 1995; Hoff 2003; Hurtado, Marchman, and Fernald 2008; Huttenlocher et al. 2002; Lieven 2010; Rowe 2008, 2012; Weizman and Snow 2001).”

“…educational level has a detrimental impact on children ’ s language skills (Dale et al., 2003; Horwitz et al., 2003; Loeb et al., 2020; Sansavini, Guarini, Savini, et al., 2011; Sentenac et al., 2020) in terms of the low quantity and quality of speech input provided to the children (Rowe, 2012).”

“In addition to sheer quantity, the quality and diversity of parent input is an important predictor of later language development (e.g., Bornstein, Haynes, & Painter, 1998; Cartmill et al., 2013; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015; Rowe, 2012).”

“To date, most studies focus on maternal contributions such as language input ( Rowe, 2012 ) and maternal sensitive responsiveness ( Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, & Baumwell, 2001 ).”

“…decontextualized talk in book reading and other conversational settings supports children’s vocabulary outcomes (Pancsofar and Vernon-Feagans, 2006; Rowe, 2012), but decontextualized talk may be particularly supportive of learning for children with stronger language skills (Pellegrini et al.,…”

“Specifically, higher maternal education is linked to children hearing more diverse words [86], more complex syntax [87–89], and experiencing more conversational turns [29,90–94]; all of which are linked to positive language outcomes.”

“Kosmidis 2006 Greek 10-16 years 15 62 [55-74] 99”

“However, when teachers do provide feedback, research generally indicates that more, as measured in conversational turns, is generally better, predicting gains in child outcomes (Cabell et al., 2015; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015; Rowe, 2012).”

“Thirdly, these activities may also lead to more use of decontextualized speech, for example, talking about past or future events and providing causal explanations about how things work in the world [20].”

“External factors include the quantity and quality of language input (Masek et al., 2021; Rowe, 2012) and socio-economic status (SES; McKean et al., 2015; Taylor et al., 2013).”

“…served as our receptive vocabulary measure at both the kindergarten and second-grade time points, it should also be noted that high mean scores for the PPVT have been reported in other cohorts of preschool/kindergarten-age children (Rowe, 2012) and the PPVT has since been re-normed (Dunn, 2019).”

“…vocabularies in 15-month-old infants; child-directed speech is littered with repetitions that push frequency of occurrence upward (Hills, 2013); and quantity of speech in early childhood is a better predictor of vocabulary than the diversity of vocabulary (Jones & Rowland, 2017; Rowe, 2012).”

“Although overhearing is known to be beneficial to building vocabulary in children (Akhtar, 2005; Akhtar, Jipson, & Callanan, 2001; Bloom, 2000; Floor & Akhtar, 2006), child-directed speech is generally considered to promote emergent lexical processing skills and foster language development, especially early in develop…”

“Longitudinal studies have also demonstrated a link between the quantity and quality of infant-directed speech and speech and language development in children with NH (Greenwood et al., 2011; Romeo et al., 2018; Rowe, 2012; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013).”

“Children need exposure to new words by hearing those words pronounced many times before speaking out and developing their language skills (Harmon et al., 2009; Linse, 2005; Meredith, 2012; Schmitt, 2000).”

“(1) Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey–Camden; (2) Temple University (3) Maternity Care Coalition; (4) University of Maryland; (5) University of Washington; (6) Georgia State University; (7) University of Delaware; (8) The University of Texas at Dallas”