From the “Here and Now” to the “There and Then”: How parent–child decontextualized conversations support early development

Decontextualized language (DL), language referring to concepts and events that are abstract or spatially, temporally, or personally displaced from the immediate context, has been shown to bolster children’s language, cognitive, and socioemotional development. Because research on parent–child DL spans multiple disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological traditions, a comprehensive framework defining DL and examining the mechanistic pathways linking DL’s unique attributes to early development remains absent. This review proposes a framework that delineates DL along three interrelated yet distinct dimensions: its function, relation to the perceptual context, and linguistic form. It also analyzes how cultural, social, personal, and contextual factors contribute to individual differences in parents’ DL input, emphasizing social and cultural factors. Additionally, this review elucidates the demonstrated links between parent–child decontextualized conversation and children’s language, cognitive, and socioemotional skills, along with the underlying mechanisms. We argue that a three-dimensional, gradient-based view of DL can enable a more refined and systematic exploration of developmental shifts and individual variation in DL. This approach also promises to enhance our understanding of its developmental implications and underlying mechanisms. In the concluding remarks, we provide practical recommendations on using this framework to inform coding and analytical choices and discuss areas we deem as priorities in DL research.