Time to Talk: Variability in Caregiver-Child Verbal Engagement During Everyday Activities Sampled From Daylong Recordings

Abstract

Children learn language through interactions with others. To document variation in how caregivers engage verbally with their 2-year-old children, we sampled six 10-min segments of dense child-directed speech from naturalistic daylong audio recordings in an economically- and linguistically-diverse sample of English- (n = 45) and Spanish-speaking (n = 45) families. Segments of child-directed speech occurred during child-centered (e.g., booksharing, play) and adult-centered (e.g., cooking) activities, with substantial variation among families. During all activity types, child-directed speech was associated with one or more linguistic or interactive features that have been shown to facilitate language development, such as lexical diversity, mean length of utterance (MLU), or responsiveness to children. Moderate to strong stability within families was found, suggesting that caregivers in some families engaged with children more than in others, regardless of the activities in which they participated. Patterns were generally similar across language groups. This study extends previous research by using naturalistic daylong recordings to explore how activity type and caregivers' individual tendencies relate to children's early language experiences.