Mothers speak less to infants during detected real-world phone use

Abstract

The current study is the first to document the real-time association between phone use and speech to infants in extended real-world interactions. N= 16 predominantly White (75%) mother–infant dyads (infants aged M = 4.1 months, SD = 2.3; 63% female) shared 16,673 min of synchronized real-world phone use and Language Environment Analysis audio data over the course of 1 week (collected 2017–2020) for our analyses. Maternal phone use was associated with a 16% decrease in infants' speech input, with shorter intervals of phone use (1–2 min) associated with a greater 26% decrease in speech input relative to longer periods. This work highlights the value of multimodal sensing to access dynamic, within-person, and context-specific predictors of speech to infants in real-world settings.