• Multilingual children use digital media regularly, in all their home languages.
• Digital media use may affect multilingual children’s early language learning by reducing opportunities for back-and-forth conversations with adults.
• This finding is similar to results of studies of digital media and language learning for children learning only one language.
• When using digital media, families can try to select programs that are geared toward building children’s skills and presented in the families’ language(s).
• Families can support language development with back-and-forth conversations (both about the digital media and unrelated), especially in the families’ language(s).

How might digital media affect multilingual children’s language learning?

Most research on digital media and child development has studied families who speak only English—but as much as 60% of the world is multilingual. We do not know much about multilingual children’s digital media use.

We explored this topic in families who speak Spanish and English. Spanish is the fourth most common language spoken worldwide; it is the second most common language spoken in the United States, where we conducted our research.

Photo by Jenny on Flickr

Exploring the effects of digital media on children’s Spanish and English language development

We studied 30 families from Mexican backgrounds that had a child between 15 and 27 months old. Families spoke mostly Spanish with their children, but all children also heard and spoke some English at home.

With the families’ permission, we recorded samples of the toddlers’ exposure to language at home. Children wore a small audio-recording device over two to three days for a total of about 15 hours. Our research team reviewed the recordings to study language exposure from digital media (television, radio, electronic games, and videos on cell phones and tablets) and from people talking.

What did we listen for in the recordings?

Based on the recordings, we noted the amount of time children were exposed to digital media, the language of the digital media (Spanish or English), and the type of digital media (programs for children or for adults).

We also reviewed the recordings to explore talk from adults and children (the number of words spoken by adults, how much back-and-forth conversation occurred between adults and the child, and children’s amount of words and babbles).

If you use digital media with your young children, you are not alone! Parents use digital media to keep children busy, to help them relax, and to assist with learning.

What did we learn? Why does it matter?

All families exposed their children to some digital media during the recordings. If you use digital media with your young children, you are not alone! Parents use digital media to keep children busy, to help them relax, and to assist with learning.

Next, we share three main findings and briefly explain their implications for how you can use digital media most effectively with your child.

Photo by Alex Green on Pexels

1. Children with more digital media exposure participated in fewer conversations with adults.

Back-and-forth conversations are essential for learning how to communicate. Children learn about communication even when they are not yet talking much. Children learn new sounds, words, and phrases from conversations. Too much digital media can limit such conversational opportunities for learning. 

Consider reducing your child’s use of digital media to under an hour per day. Or talk more with your child while they watch media.  Ask them who, what, where, and why questions about the program. Connect the events in the program to their life. Expand on what your child says with new information. These strategies can support language development. 

2. Children heard more media in Spanish than in English.

This matches our finding that families used more Spanish than English when talking to their children. We strongly recommend high-quality and regular conversations in the family’s language(s)—any languages the family uses—to provide the strongest support to the child.

Often, this is parents’ native language(s). Learning the family language (English or another language) can help support children’s identities, connections to family and culture, and future outcomes. Digital media in the family language may play a supportive role.

We also found that programs for adults, like news or telenovelas, tended to be in Spanish. Programs for children, like cartoons, were often in English. Parents may have selected programs in English to help their children learn English before starting school. We do not know how digital media supports children to learn two languages.

In general, children are more successful learning words from human conversations than from digital media. Most children who attend U.S. schools learn English over time, with English supported in their schools. Schools may not help children learn the family language. It may be important for caregivers to use the family language at home so children can become multilingual.

Learning the family language (English or another language) can help support children’s identities, connections to family and culture, and future outcomes.

3. Children heard more media intended for adults than for children, but watching children’s programs appeared to increase children’s use of words and babbles.

Child-focused programs may support children in practicing new words. Programs that teach a school skill, like numbers or letters, or a social skill, like how to make friends, may be most helpful.

Still, back-and-forth conversations with a live person are best for children’s language development.

Photo by Marta Wave on Pexels

How can you support your child’s communication?

Based on our findings and those of other studies, we recommend that parents and caregivers:

• Limit exposure to digital media when possible. Instead, include children in social activities, like helping with chores or playing.
• Select digital media in the family language(s) that have educational goals. Avoid programs that do not teach your child new skills. 
• When possible, talk with your child while you listen to or watch digital media. Ask what, why, who, and where questions about the content. When they respond, keep the conversation going by adding to what they say. 
• Continue to use your family language(s) often with your child, even if they do not respond in the same language(s). Look for opportunities for your child to have more meaningful interactions in your family language(s), like telling stories or reading books. 
• Remember that there is no evidence that multilingualism or support for the family language(s) causes or worsens existing speech or language delays.

Discover the Spanish version of this article here.

The post Children’s digital media exposure as a backdrop for multilingual learning appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

1. Ask your children to remember what they did at school, other times they were away from you, or when you went on a special outing. If children cannot think of anything to say, ask more specific questions.
2. Listen to what your children tell you. Ask follow-up questions, including how they felt about what happened. Avoid correcting your children about their impressions.
3. These conversations can happen anytime there are moments to spare – for example, at a bus stop or in a waiting room.
4. Elaborative reminiscing can support children’s developing language and literacy skills (e.g., narrative skills, vocabulary understanding, phonological awareness) and socioemotional development (e.g., less anxiety and withdrawal, increased helping behaviors, better understanding and control of negative emotions, improved autobiographical memory).

“What did you do in school today?”: Elaborative reminiscing can yield answers

Most parents, when picking up their child from school, have asked, “What did you do in school today?” and heard their child respond, “Nothing.” What happens next depends on many factors, but mostly it depends on the parent.

Some parents think their child just does not want to talk about their day and change the subject. Other parents challenge their child (e.g., by saying something like, “No, that was not what happened…”), which is usually no more successful at eliciting descriptions of the child’s experiences than changing the subject. Success would be getting a child’s own extended description of what happened during some experience.

Photo: Tatiana Syrikova. Pexels.

My colleague Carole Peterson (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada) and I wanted to understand better what strategies parents use that can effectively get children to share something about their day.

We conducted a study in Newfoundland (Canada), with middle-class, European American families with two- to two-and-a-half-year-old children.  We found that the most successful parent strategy for eliciting information was asking specific follow-up questions, such as, “What did you play at recess?” or “What stories did the teacher read to you?”

Children of parents who asked a lot of questions about one particular topic became the best narrators over a year later, telling lengthier stories that included more key elements, such as background information and details about how situations got resolved.

We call such parents topic extenders. Other researchers have found similar results and dubbed this kind of extensive conversing between parents and children elaborative reminiscing or joint reminiscing.

Elaboratively reminiscing benefits children’s language and socio-emotional development 

Peterson and I, along with Beulah Jesso (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada), then engaged in an experiment in which we randomly assigned parents of children (average age 3 years and 7 months old) in families with low incomes to one of two conditions.

In the first, we talked to parents about elaborative reminiscing and how important it could be to their children’s language acquisition; the second was a business-as-usual control group.

Collaborative, elaborative reminiscing with children of various ages benefits the children linguistically, cognitively, emotionally, and academically.

After a year, despite not specifically mentioning vocabulary to parents, children in the experimental (elaborative reminiscing) group had significantly better receptive vocabulary (the ability to understand words) than those in the control group.

After another year, they also had significantly better narrative skills. We learned that storytellers are made, not born.

Elaborative reminiscing benefits additional areas of language and socio-emotional development

Elaborative reminiscing benefits children in a variety of ways. Research has shown that, in addition to improvements in children’s vocabulary and narrative structure, elaborative reminiscing increases children’s phonological awareness, which is critical for learning to read. Reading interactively with children does not have the same effect.

In addition to promoting language benefits, elaborative reminiscing affects children’s socioemotional development in many ways, reducing children’s tendencies to act out or have internalizing problems (e.g., sadness, anxiety, withdrawal), and increasing their prosocial skills (e.g., being kind and helpful to others).

Such reminiscing helps children understand their negative emotions and regulate them. Children’s memory of their own lives (autobiographical memory) is also more coherent.

Teaching parents how to elaboratively reminisce

Many different families have benefitted from learning of the importance of elaborative reminiscing. Children who live in poverty benefit; after all, elaborative reminiscing costs nothing, requires no particular accomplishment or comfort with reading books on the part of their parents, and is fun.

Photo: Ketut Subiyanto. Pexels.

Parents from New Zealand families of diverse backgrounds have benefited from this kind of instruction. In addition, my colleague Ashleigh Hillier (University of Massachusetts Lowell) and I have taught parents of teenagers on the autism spectrum to engage in elaborative reminiscing, something that the parents had not considered important but that extended parents’ talk about the past with their teenaged children.

Moreover, this type of reminiscing may even benefit children who have been maltreated by their mothers. When these mothers learn to elaboratively reminisce with their children, their children may eventually have better physiological regulation.

Cultural qualities of reminiscing

Despite the fact that observing and learning about elaborative reminiscing has been successful in a number of different cultures, parent-child talk about the past has documented some cultural differences.

Many Asian cultures do not value extensive talk about an individual’s past experiences. In particular, many Japanese parents consider such lengthy talk unsuitable. Cultural differences in reminiscing conversations have also been found in Western European cultures, such as Germany, Sweden, and Estonia.

How to elaboratively reminisce with children

Parents should understand that collaborative, elaborative reminiscing with their children at various ages benefits the children linguistically, cognitively, emotionally, and academically. In this work, parents are encouraged to accept their children’s view of what happened, even if the parents have different ideas.

The more you reminisce with your child, the better they will get at doing so and the more you will foster their well-being in many areas of development.

I have collected examples of children’s talk about going to Disney World and Disneyland. When parents asked children to tell their grandparents their favorite part of the adventure, they expected children to say “meeting Goofy” or “going on the It’s a Small World ride.”

Instead, children said their favorite things were experiences like the “blue lights on the floor of the plane,” “a real dead armadillo on the side of the road,” and “two sinks in our bathroom.” Parents who accept their children’s point of view learn a lot about their children’s thoughts and values and foster their development.

The best times to reminisce with children include when you are eating dinner together or waiting for doctors or buses or driving somewhere together. Children especially enjoy being asked about what to them are notable events.

For example, you might ask: Did anybody do something weird in preschool today? Did you get hurt? Do you remember what happened the last time we went to the doctor’s office?

Tell them about experiences you have had (e.g., the time you got in trouble with a teacher). The more you reminisce with your child, the better they will get at doing so and the more you will foster their well-being in many areas of development.

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Key takeaways for caregivers

• Before their first birthday, most infants sleep 12 hours a day and can sleep through the night.
• Infants who had good-quality and sufficient night sleep at eight months had better language development and greater cognitive skills at 14 months.
• Infants with good sleep quality had higher morning cortisol levels than those with lower-quality sleep, which may reflect more mature brain organization.
• Because sleep promotes learning and brain development, caregivers should learn sleep routines and strategies that help babies learn how to sleep through the night.

The sleep-wake circadian cycle and learning

In the early months, newborns sleep about 75% of a 24-hour day. By nine months, they sleep about 50% of a 24-hour cycle.

A circadian rhythm (or inner clock-like signals) develops during the first year to establish an adult-like pattern of being awake during the day and asleep at night. However, after their first birthday, about 20% to 30% of toddlers continue to have night wakings or poor night sleep.

Photo: NICHD. Creative Commons.

Sound infant sleep is important for healthy development. Research suggests that the quantity and quality of infants’ sleep are linked to learning and brain development.

For example, babies who sleep for shorter periods have poorer memories, and infants who have difficulty sleeping at night have trouble remembering new words.

Sleep and stress response cycles

While developing a sleep-wake cycle, infants’ circadian rhythm also develops to respond to stress. When stress is perceived, a cycle starts that releases cortisol, a stress hormone that provides a boost of stored energy to help the body get through the stressor. The extra boost helps the individual deal with the stressor through the fight or flight response.

Stressors are not always extreme or intense in nature.

For example, infants often show distress when crying and fidgeting during a diaper change, when overstimulated, or when hungry or sleepy. Every interaction and change in an infant’s day can be a stressor and can lead to a cortisol response that helps prepare the body to respond to stress.

Optimal sleep (i.e., sleeping sufficiently and soundly through the night) at eight months was associated with higher learning and language skills at 14 months.

Cortisol becomes unhealthy when it is repeatedly released and remains elevated. Such elevated levels have been linked to poor learning and functioning, suggesting that too much cortisol may harm brain development.

In adults, cortisol levels are typically high in the morning, decrease steadily over the day, and are low at night as sleep approaches. Infants are thought to mimic the adult day-night cortisol circadian rhythm; however, few studies have explored the relation between infants’ cortisol and sleep cycles.

Do infant sleep and cortisol relate to later language and learning skills?

We conducted a study to better understand if infants’ quality of sleep relates to their later language development and overall learning abilities. The infants were White and from middle-class families, and they attended a high-quality childcare program in a southeastern state in the United States.

When babies reached eight months and again at 14 months, parents answered questions related to their infants’ sleep routine, sleep environment, and the quality and quantity of their babies’ sleep.

At both time points, the child care provider completed assessments of the infant’s communication and language skills (e.g., nods head to indicate yes, uses sounds/words to get attention) and learning and cognitive skills (e.g., imitates, looks, or points to an object when asked where it is).

To begin to explore the role of cortisol levels in the connection between sleep and learning in the early years, we also collected morning saliva from the babies at both time points.

Infants with better night sleep had better language and cognitive abilities as toddlers

In our study, we asked whether babies who had regular sleep routines and good nighttime sleep developed better language and learning/cognitive skills than babies with irregular sleep routines and poor nighttime sleep.

We found that optimal sleep (i.e., sleeping sufficiently and soundly through the night) at eight months was associated with higher learning and language skills at 14 months. These findings suggest that achieving good quality and quantity of sleep before the first birthday may relate to young infant’s later language development and overall learning.

Photo: hessam nabavi. Unsplash.

Higher morning cortisol stress hormone levels related to better toddler sleep

We also looked at whether morning cortisol stress hormone levels of 14-month-olds were related to sleep at the same age. We found that toddlers who had optimal night sleep also had the highest morning cortisol stress hormone levels.

In adults, cortisol levels tend to be higher shortly after waking. Thus, the higher cortisol levels in toddlers may indicate more mature brain development in toddlers who had better nighttime sleep.

Sleep enhances early brain development

Our findings showed that optimal sleep in infancy was associated with better language and learning skills in toddlerhood. These results are consistent with the idea that sleep enhances early brain development.

One explanation for why sleep helps an infant’s brains develop is that sleep triggers the release of brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters, that build and strengthen the brain’s pathways for forming memories of information an infant learned that day.

Good sleep also prepares infants to learn the next day. Young infant’s learning opportunities typically occur through daytime interactions. When infant’s have slept well, they may wake up more relaxed and ready to engage.

In contrast, infants who have not slept well may awaken sluggish, irritable, and less ready to socialize and learn. Because sleep is important for solidifying past learning and preparing children to learn even more, caregivers should help infants and toddlers achieve restful, continuous sleep at night.

How can parents support their children’s brain development?

Caregivers can help infants achieve restful sleep by establishing routines at home that start at about the same time each day and signal to the baby that nighttime sleep is approaching.

For example, after the last nursing or bottle feeding of the day, parents might use calming strategies to promote greater infant relaxation, such as giving a warm bath, singing a lullaby, reading a quiet story, and providing a massage.

Caregivers should help infants and toddlers achieve restful, continuous sleep at night.

Parents should try to decrease environmental stimulation to help their infant shift from being awake and active to being relaxed and ready for a long sleep. Dark, quiet, screen-free, calm places are considered good sleeping environments for young infants.

If babies wake up during the night, parents can use strategies to help infants self-regulate and fall back asleep. Parents should understand each infant’s unique sleep needs and should not assume that all babies will respond similarly to an evening routine.

For example, infants with health conditions, neurodevelopmental issues, and trauma often have disrupted sleep. Caregivers of these infants may need additional help to learn how to develop effective sleep routines for their infants.

In summary, parents’ sensitivity to young infant’s individual needs while developing their sleep routines should help babies achieve good, restful sleep at night so that when babies are awake, they are ready to learn and develop new skills.

Good, restful sleep may lead to more mature brain development in the early years, which may be measured by higher morning cortisol levels.

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Key takeaways for caregivers

• Playing with toys is an important activity for caregivers and infants to do together to support healthy development.
• When caregivers read manufacturers’ descriptions of toys, they were more likely to choose technological toys, but research suggests that these toys may have significant drawbacks, such as decreased engagement between caregivers and infants and less language use while playing.
• Reading toy descriptions with a critical eye is a good way to purchase high-quality toys for infants.

Choosing certain toys can positively affect child development

Many parents, caregivers, and family members face the challenge of selecting a toy as a gift for a child. What will they like? What do they already own? What toy will be best for them? And most confusing, how do I select which toy out of what seems like hundreds and hundreds of options? No wonder the choice feels so overwhelming: Toys are big business – a $40 billion dollar industry in the United States in 2022.

Beyond their role in the marketplace, though, toys are important for infants’ development because they play a critical role in supporting and encouraging play. Toys can encourage physical activity, such as tossing and catching a ball or pushing a toy train around a room. They can also provide a jumping off point for fostering social interactions between individuals, for example, when two children share and play with a toy together.

Toys can also expand children’s thinking as they use them to represent other objects, such as a toy phone in place of a smartphone. And they can also support the expression of creativity, as occurs when children use blocks to build a structure.

Playing with toys is not only about the toy itself, but also about how individuals interact with each other while they are playing.

The importance of playing with toys for infants’ development is well-established. But another important factor is critical to consider – the idea that interactions between caregivers and infants during play (with and without toys) help support babies’ cognitive and social development.

For instance, when caregivers and infants engage in back-and-forth interactions focused on the same topic or object of interest, infants can learn new words and develop an understanding of how to take turns in a conversation. In other words, playing with toys is not only about the toy itself, but also about how individuals interact with each other while they are playing.

Choosing technological toys may negatively affect children’s development

Toys are powerful tools for development and they can support important caregiver-child interactions. But are all toys created equal in terms of their potential to foster high-quality interactions?

In short, probably not. In particular, research suggests that technological or electronic toys – those that need batteries to operate – might have negative effects on how caregivers and infants play together and talk during their playful interactions. For example, when using electronic toys, caregivers might talk more about how to make the toy work (e.g., using more commands like, “Push the button”) instead of letting infants direct the interaction or asking open-ended questions.

How do caregivers approach decisions about buying toys?

Since toys are important tools for supporting cognitive and social development, and the types of toys caregivers and children play with may differentially affect important interactions, we need to better understand how caregivers approach purchasing toys for their infants.

To examine this matter, we conducted a study with caregivers. We asked how they approached purchasing toys for their infants. We also investigated whether and how manufacturers’ claims about the specific developmental benefits of toys affected caregivers’ purchasing decisions. In our study, we examined three questions:

• What types of toys do infants and caregivers play with?
• What are caregivers’ preferences for electronic versus traditional toys?
• How do advertisements of the developmental features of toys affect caregivers’ toy selections?

Photo: Polesie Toys. Pexels.

Examining how and what caregivers think about toys

Sixty-three primary caregivers of infants (0-24 months) across the United States took part in the study. Most caregivers were White (78%), 3% were Black, 5% were Asian, 13% were Latinx, and 1% were of another ethnicity. Caregivers’ highest level of educational attainment ranged from a high school diploma (3%) to a graduate degree (79%).

In our survey, caregivers were asked to report how often their infant engaged in playing with blocks, dolls or stuffed animals, electronic toys (i.e., toys with batteries), electronic and non-electronic books, electronic and non-electronic puzzles, and other toys.

Next, caregivers viewed eight images of infant toys without descriptions. Four of the eight toys were electronic, with features including lights and sounds, and required batteries. The other four toys were traditional or otherwise identified as non-electronic toys (e.g., shape sorters, stacking blocks, puzzles). Caregivers were asked to identify four toys they would be interested in buying.

Next, caregivers answered questions about their toy purchasing behaviors and opinions about toy marketing. Then the same eight toys were shown again (in a different order), this time with manufacturers’ descriptions. The descriptions included the toys’ developmental benefits (e.g., fostering fine motor skills, an understanding of cause and effect, or counting skills), and disclosed whether or not the toys were electronic. Finally, caregivers were again asked to select four toys they would be interested in buying and answered the same set of questions about toy buying.

Caregivers should ask themselves whether manufacturers’ claims about toys are supported by research or if they just feature buzzwords to sell the product.

What types of toys do caregivers and infants play with?

The youngest infants (0-6 months) used electronic toys most frequently (88% used them at least once per day), while fewer than 70% of the infants used traditional toys at least once per day. This indicates that technological toys are already part of infants’ daily routines, even at very young ages. Depending on age, between 33% and 46% of older infants (7-24 months) also used electronic toys at least once per day.

What are caregivers’ preferences for choosing between electronic and traditional toys? 

Before being exposed to the toy descriptions, caregivers were significantly more likely to select traditional than non-traditional toys for their infants. But after reading the descriptions, there was no difference between their selections of traditional and technological toys. That is, they were equally likely to choose either type of toy when descriptions were provided.

This indicates that caregivers were likely influenced by the presence of descriptions when making their selections and that reading these descriptions tended to bias them toward selecting more electronic toys, relative to when they were not given descriptions to read.

How do advertisements of the developmental features of toys affect caregivers’ toy selections?

Caregivers more often agreed with the following statements after reading the toy descriptions than before they read them: “Toy descriptions are accurate representations of toys,” “My toy purchasing decisions are impacted by the developmental benefits of toys,” and “Toys positively impact the cognitive development of infants.” This suggests that the descriptions influenced how caregivers perceived the toys’ ability to affect infant development.

Photo: PNW Production. Pexels.

Recommendations for caregivers when buying toys

The findings from our study suggest that being critical consumers of manufacturers’ toy descriptions can be beneficial for caregivers. Additional research is needed to determine how these findings generalize to other contexts, such as different types of toys, toys for different age groups and for other demographic groups, and actual toy-buying decisions. Understanding the power of toy descriptions for technological toys, in particular, is important because the market for these types of toys is expanding rapidly globally and is expected to grow another 16% between 2019 and 2025.

Caregivers should ask themselves whether manufacturers’ claims about toys are supported by research or if they just feature buzzwords to sell the product. It can be hard to know if claims are trustworthy, so caregivers can consider whether the toy helps support back-and-forth interactions and conversations between caregiver and child or between children.

Toys can be especially beneficial if they have the potential to spark social interactions, imagination, and creativity, or if they foster learning about concepts like math, spatial skills, or new vocabulary words. Caregivers may also want to consider if any additional features of a toy support these high-quality interactions rather than just being superficially distracting.

Finally, it is important to remember that supporting children’s healthy development does not require purchasing toys at all! Caregivers can engage in the kinds of back-and-forth interactions that support learning and social interaction through other types of play, such as playing with everyday objects like pans or boxes, as well as everyday conversations.

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Key takeaways on Children’s Screen Time for caregivers

• Research shows that most toddlers spend a significant amount of time watching screens – an average of about 4 hours a day.
• Toddlers who spend more time watching screens, such as television, videos, and digital games, may have fewer expressive language skills, or the ability to express themselves verbally.
• Caregivers can support language development by having conversations with their child during or after screen time and by engaging in high-quality language interactions without screens at other times of the day (e.g., while on transportation, at meals).

Why screen time might affect a child’s language development

Young children rapidly learn words by interacting with their environment, such as through conversations with their caregivers. However, how much language children are exposed to in the home environment varies widely across families, contributing to school readiness gaps between children from low- and middle-income backgrounds. Children’s screen time, including watching television and videos, and playing digital games, is one early experience that may be related to their language development.

There is research to suggest that brain development through screens may be slower when compared to interaction with caregivers. Photo: Thom Cochrane. Creative Commons.

High levels of screen time may replace interaction with caregivers

Many researchers have theorized about the impact of screen time on young children’s language development. First, high levels of screen time may replace interaction with a caregiver who can respond to and elicit responses from children. This tailored back-and-forth interaction, or contingent responding, influences learning and allows children to practice their language skills.

Young children have trouble learning from media

Second, although some media products for toddlers are marketed as educational, evidence suggests that children this age have trouble learning from media, perhaps because videos are often simpler than real-life experiences and replace rich real-world stimuli. This may be especially important for toddlers from homes with low incomes, who are likely to experience high levels of media exposure and are most at risk for delays in language development.

More screen time was associated with lower levels of language skills for toddlers.

Studying screen time and language in children

To examine the relationship between screen time and a child’s language development, we conducted a study that asked two questions:

1. How much screen time do toddlers from homes with low incomes experience?
2. Is the amount of screen time related to toddlers’ language development?

Our study used data from the Kids in Columbus Study, a longitudinal study on midwestern U.S. two- and three-year-olds living in poverty (i.e., 185% of U.S. Poverty Income Guidelines). We collected data on 157 toddlers; 54% were Black, 47% were White, and 8% were Latino (respondents could select all races and ethnicities that applied).

Caregivers completed surveys on toddlers’ screen time during an average weekday (e.g., in front of a television watching programs, videos, and DVDs; playing video games; using computers, cell phones, handheld video games, tablets, smartphones, and other electronic devices). About six months later, we observed toddlers’ language abilities by taking a standardized measurement of what words toddlers understood and what words they could speak. 

Screen time can influence a child’s language development. Photo: Karolina Grabowska. Pexels.

How much screen time do children from homes with low incomes experience?

The toddlers’ amount of screen time varied. While some families reported little to no screen time, a substantial portion reported more than 8 hours per day. The average amount of daily screen time was nearly 4 hours. This finding is similar to nationally representative data showing that daily screen time for children under eight years old living in homes with low incomes was 3.5 hours.

More screen time was related to lower levels of expressive language

Next, we sought to determine whether the amount of toddlers’ screen time related to their language development. We measured language development by looking at toddlers’ scores on two tests: the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. More screen time was associated with lower levels of language skills for toddlers.

It is challenging, and probably not necessary or advisable, to avoid all screen time.

Interestingly, screen time was related only to toddlers’ expressive language (i.e., their ability to express themselves verbally) and not to their receptive language (i.e., how well they understand when others speak to them) or vocabulary (i.e., the words they understand). Screen time could influence children’s ability to use language themselves because it may replace opportunities to practice talking, such as conversations with a caregiver or other adults.

How can caregivers support children’s early language development during screen time?

Today, it is challenging, and probably not necessary or advisable, to avoid all screen time. Yet caregivers can take several steps to support children’s language development in the context of our digital world.

First, caregivers can co-participate in the screen time with the child. They can talk with their child about what they are watching or doing on screens. Second, they can engage in high-quality language interactions without screens at other times of the day (e.g., while on transportation, at meals). And third, because not all screen content is created equal, caregivers can monitor what children are using and help them seek out high-quality programming, including educational shows and applications. Caregivers can look to sources informed by research, such as Common Sense Media, to find age-based recommendations.

Co-participating in screen time could enhance a child’s development. Photo: Wayan Vota. Creative Commons.

Our finding that more screen time was related to lower levels of expressive language skills is especially important because children from homes with low incomes are already at risk for language delay and lower levels of school readiness than their peers from middle- and upper-income homes. More screen time could further widen this gap. Researchers may benefit from comparing relations between screen use and language development in children from other income levels (e.g., middle and high income).

In addition, researchers need to examine whether using educational media or using media with an adult is less likely to be related to lower levels of language skills than is using screen time for entertainment or alone. Studies could also explore potential interventions to support caregivers in providing stimulating language environments for children and keeping screens as a fun, but not predominant, part of their lives.

The post Toddlers’ screen time: Links between screen time and child development appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Many parents look for clear guidance on how to navigate their children’s use of digital media, asking “Is too much screen time bad for my child?” or “How much tablet time should my child get?” But the answer is not a simple “yes” or “less,” especially for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
• Instead of hard rules about how much digital media children should use or when, it can be more fruitful to consider how they are using technology, what they are doing with it, and who is engaging with them as they use this media. This is particularly important when looking at impacts on young children’s vocabulary development.
• The world in which young children are growing up is digital. Instead of banning technology, parents should consider how it can supplement their children’s learning instead of distracting from it.

Children’s use of technology and digital media are inevitable: Focus on how and what they are doing with it

Imagine your own childhood and where you learned about new animals – a dog, fish, or even a giraffe or elephant. Chances are, it was by seeing the dog in the neighbor’s yard or watching an elephant at the zoo, perhaps supplemented with stuffed animals or pictures in a storybook.

How children experience the world vs adults

Now consider where your child has encountered the concept of “dog” or “elephant.” In addition to the petting zoo, you might have added “in Paw Patrol” or “while playing ABCMouse” or even (for older children) “in Minecraft.” How children experience the world today is different from how their parents might have, or even from how an older sibling might have learned before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Technology and digital media are rapidly increasing and present in daily life for most Western families. They are impossible to avoid for adults and young children alike. Most parents have wondered if too much screen time will cause their child to be delayed or if particular applications can “fry children’s brains.” They wonder if it is okay to let their child use a tablet every so often, or which applications are educational. The truth is that there is not an easy response to these questions because the answer varies depending on the family, child, and type of media being consumed.

Photo: Toca Boca. Creative Commons.

Advice on how to navigate this space as a parent or caregiver is also changing rapidly, in part because research is still yielding results. Each day, researchers add a bit more to our knowledge of how children use technology, what it means for their learning, and what later impacts it might have. As we continue to learn more about the role of technology and digital media in young children’s lives, updating how we think about technology and looking to the future can be instructive.

In a recent paper, I examined the role of digital media by considering whether questions about what and how much children are using are not the right questions to ask in the first place. Instead, what if we asked: How are children using technology? What is their experience with digital media like? Who is helping or interacting with young children as they engage in screen time at home?

Questions might also consider how digital context differs from real-world experiences, how the content of digital applications varies from the content in books or toys, and how each child and household may be unique in their uses of and needs for technology.

Learning in a digital context differs from learning with real items

Digital applications are often less social than real-world interactions, with fewer interactive elements. Even when an application or program includes a relatable human character, it often does not factor in the child’s responses or behavior or has low quality of an interaction (e.g., it asks hypothetical questions, but does not allow time for the child to respond).

Most parents have wondered if too much screen time will cause their child to be delayed, or if particular applications can “fry children’s brains.”

We know that having dyadic – real-time, back-and-forth – conversations is critical for children’s language development. The more digital videos replace everyday conversations like grocery store banter or before-bedtime rituals, the fewer words and language skills children learn. Nonetheless, when technology is used in ways that make the context social – such as connecting with Grandma on video chat or playing a joint game in an application – children’s learning and social connectedness improve.

Digital learning allows less exploration

In addition to digital contexts being less social than actual conversations, they are also less rich and allow less exploration. Cartoons and 2D drawings are frequent in digital media and many features of the real world simply cannot be replicated even in virtual reality (e.g., the technology for virtual smells and tastes is still in development and uncommon outside of high-tech centers). This means that digital context at home is simpler and of lower quality than what real life might provide a child.

But that does not mean children cannot learn from digital media. Rather, it means that they are more likely to do when experiences that cannot be replicated online (e.g., smells, tastes, 3D forms) are supplemented off screen. For instance, if a child is learning the word “milk” on an application, she can see the shape of the milk carton, notice its white color, and discover that it is a drink.

Yet if the concept of milk is only presented in simple images on a screen, richer details about actual milk cannot be captured (e.g., texture, material). For example, on a screen, spilled milk might look the same as spilled glue. Only as children explore in real-world settings, such as at mealtimes, can they gain critical knowledge through touch, such as realizing the watery texture of milk and preventing a glue-eating mishap.

Photo: Alex Green. Pexels.

Digital content differs from real-world experiences

The recorded dialogue that makes up most digital media is often slower and more formal than what children hear at home. Similarly, objects in a picture are seen from only one angle without the opportunity to rotate, touch, or attempt to eat the item. These limited views are harder to learn from in the moment. They also make it harder for children to transfer learning from the tablet to the real world; in a phenomenon called the transfer deficit, children may learn the name of a new toy in a video but not be able to recognize the same toy in real life.

However, if children get a real-world foundation first, it can be easier for them to recognize and learn more about those items when they appear in a digital form. Moreover, digital worlds make it possible for children to get a wider variety of experiences – seeing fairy tales in action, or new examples of exotic animals that go beyond the static storybook. This sort of variety is beneficial, especially when learning new words. So digital content is not inherently bad, but supplementing it with real world experiences is key.

Digital media learning needs to be adapted to each individual child

How children interact with digital media varies based on their age, which can change what children do with it, which in turn influences how technology may affect their learning. For instance, by age three, most children know the names of more than 300 different real-life objects and are starting to extend these labels to new items, including those in digital form. But they may have trouble transferring learning the reverse way – from a tablet to the world. Similarly, by the time most children are four, their cognitive maturity is advanced and the transfer deficit presents less of a barrier to learning.

In essence, as children get older and engage in more rich, social experiences, they learn how to learn. Once they know how to learn, they can extend that new ability to new places, including technology.

When technology is used in ways that make the context social – such as connecting with Grandma on video chat or playing a joint game in an application – children’s learning and social connectedness improve.

At the same time, every child is different, with unique strengths and backgrounds. Some children with vision or hearing deficits may need a tablet for adaptive purposes. Other children may be extremely shy but can slowly gain confidence in communicating by using FaceTime.

There are also vast differences in how different cultures and families of different socioeconomic statuses use technology, with children’s prior experience with technology varying as widely as the ways in which it is used. For these reasons, it is difficult if not impossible to give blanket advice on whether children should or should not use technology, or how much screen time they should have.

Focus on how and what children are learning in both digital and real-world experiences

Children’s future includes technology. And that technology looks different from what parents and caregivers have experienced, and will differ even more a few years from now. As the digital landscape shifts, parents should look for digital experiences that are interactive, driven by children’s curiosity, and variable, and that can be supplemented with real-life experiences and social interactions.

But parents and caregivers also should not be too concerned. If children are getting rich real-world interactions and their exposure to technology is supplemented with a variety of other experiences, they will have opportunities for deep learning. Instead of wondering if there should be more or less screen time, parents should think about how and what their children are learning and lean into the children’s world to engage with them.

The post How does digital media shape young children’s word learning? appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• Fathers’ participation in shared book reading has important and unique contributions to children’s development.
• Fathers can successfully and effectively engage in shared reading with their children regardless of their own reading abilities or confidence with reading aloud.
• Fathers who view shared reading as part of their parental responsibility and as an opportunity to bond with their children are more likely to engage in shared book reading activities.

What is shared book reading?

Shared book reading occurs when an adult – typically a family member or caregiver – reads to and with a child. This is a common practice for many families across the world. Familial shared book reading is important for many reasons: It introduces young children to print concepts such as book orientation and reading direction, promotes a range of early language and literacy skills in children, and helps develop positive relationships between caregivers and children.

Shared book reading is uniquely important for children’s development

The types of language exchanges that occur during shared reading are typically more advanced than those occurring in everyday conversations between children and adults. Additionally, the text found in books used during shared book reading introduces children to new vocabulary words beyond what they typically hear in their daily lives.

Parents also tend to engage with their children differently during shared book reading than they do in other types of activities, such as physical play or pretend play. Specific to father-child interactions, research shows that the diversity of fathers’ vocabulary, the number of questions asked, and the length of spoken sentences is greater during shared reading than it is while playing with toys (Salo et al., 2016). This positions shared book reading as a key activity that fathers can engage in that promotes children’s development in many areas.

Fathers interact with children in positive ways during shared book reading

Recent decades have seen increases in fathers’ participation in a variety of activities with their children, including shared book reading. Although some fathers and mothers tend to read books with their children in similar ways, research has shown that Dads interact with their children differently than mothers while reading with their children (Cutler & Palkovitz, 2020). Specifically, fathers ask children more open-ended questions (who, why) – a practice that challenges children’s thinking and expands their language skills (Rowe et al., 2004). Dads also engage in more conversationally challenging interactions with their children during shared book reading than do mothers (Anderson et al., 2004; Tomasello et al., 1990).

Photo: RODNAE Productions. Pexels.

Physical interactions also differ during reading. Recent research has shown that fathers are more likely than mothers to engage in close, interlocking contact while reading with their children, a behavior that helps promote a positive reading experience between parents and children (Cutler, 2020).

What fathers say and do during shared book reading matters for children’s development

Both the quantity and quality of father-child exchanges during shared book reading predict children’s language and literacy skills, influencing what children say and understand. For example, fathers’ linguistic complexity (the types of vocabulary words used, how many overall words are spoken) is positively associated with children’s expressive language (what they say; Rowe et al., 2004; Tomasello et al., 1990). Fathers’ participation in shared book reading also positively affects children’s receptive language skills (what they understand from spoken language; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2004).

Language input

Additionally, fathers’ language input while reading books to their children is related to children’s general academic outcomes. Children whose fathers frequently participated in shared book reading activities with them when they were two years old had more advanced social-emotional skills and higher reading and math scores in pre-kindergarten than did children whose fathers read with them less often (Baker, 2013). Furthermore, fathers’ engagement in shared book reading is positively associated with children’s attention skills and ability to regulate emotions, especially for boys (Malin et al., 2014).

Why are fathers less likely than mothers to read to children?

Yet despite the important contributions fathers make to their children’s development through shared book reading, they are less likely than mothers to consistently read with their children or to be the main reader in the household. This gap has narrowed in recent decades, though, as fathers have increased their general levels of participation in their children’s lives.

Both the quantity and quality of father-child exchanges during shared book reading predict children’s language and literacy skills, influencing what children say and understand.

For some U.S. families, a positive outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rise in family participation in reading activities, including between fathers and their children (Carlson et al., 2022; Mayol-García, 2022). Maintaining a higher level of father participation in shared book reading can have both short- and long-term positive effects on children, families, and communities. What factors may influence whether these trends continue?

Factors predicting fathers’ participation in shared book reading

Many factors influence how frequently fathers read with their children, including familial ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds. In cultures across the globe, views vary regarding parents’ and familial caregivers’ roles in supporting young children’s language and literacy development. Though parent-child shared book reading is common in many countries, not all cultures favor shared reading as the primary way to involve children in literacy activities.

For example, some Hispanic and Native American families view oral storytelling as more important than or equally important as reading books with their children (Janes & Kermani, 2001; Nelson-Strouts & Gillispie, 2017). Such practices benefit children’s development and can be considered complementary activities fathers can participate in with their children.

Photo: Karolina Grabowska. Pexels.

Father’s views on parenting roles

Father’s views of their parenting roles and responsibilities also play a part. Fathers who view shared book reading as part of their parenting responsibility or whose partners expect them to read with their children are more likely to do so (Ortiz, 2004; Swain et al., 2017). The overall level of engagement fathers have with their children is also associated with the likelihood that they will read with them. It makes sense that fathers who are very involved and available to their children are more likely to read with them.

Furthermore, fathers’ personal experiences with reading affect how often they read with their children. Dads who are confident readers, who enjoy reading themselves, and who have had positive experiences with reading, either at home or in school (or both), are more likely to participate in shared reading activities with their children than dads who have not had these experiences (Duursma et al., 2008; Ortiz, 2004).

The types of books available

The type of books available during shared book reading and fathers’ perceptions of the purpose of shared reading experiences can also influence how often they participate in this activity. Some Dads feel more comfortable reading informational or non-fiction books than fiction books with their children (Robertson & Reese, 2017). The availability of books in the home in fathers’ native languages also affects how likely they are to read with their children. Fathers who have limited literacy or who speak a different first language than their children are less likely to participate in shared book reading (Duursma et al., 2008; Ortiz, 2004).

All fathers can engage in shared book reading, regardless of their reading ability or familiarity with reading aloud

Attitudes matter, too. Sitting close to or holding a child while relaxing and sharing books together is often perceived as a time of emotional closeness between parents and children. Dads who view shared book reading as an opportunity to spend time with and bond with their children are more likely to participate than fathers who view the experience as a chore or as a way to teach their children a lesson (Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1992; Janes & Kermani, 2001).

Conclusion

By engaging in shared reading with their children, fathers can support children’s development while also fostering positive father-child relationships. Many fathers across the world recognize the importance of shared book reading. However, the rates at which fathers read with their children continues to lag behind that of mothers.

Highlighting the unique contributions Dads make to children’s development through reading is an important consideration for programs and policies designed to support families and communities. Supporting fathers who are hesitant to read with their children or feel less confident about reading is also important.

All fathers can engage in shared book reading, regardless of their reading ability or familiarity with reading aloud. Here are suggestions for how to ensure that all fathers feel supported in shared book reading.

Considerations for fatherhood programs and family literacy initiatives

• Normalize and promote father-child shared book reading as an important activity for fathers.
• Highlight the unique contributions fathers make to their children’s development by engaging in shared reading.
• Focus on the overall importance of sharing books and not on being a “perfect” reader. (For example, encourage the idea that stories can be shared without reading every single word on the page.)
• Ensure that messaging and marketing materials promoting family literacy activities feature fathers.
• Select books to share that are of interest to a wide range of fathers and that account for the varying literacy abilities of adult readers, such as books that feature fathers interacting with their children in positive ways, bilingual books, and wordless picture books.
• Offer books that portray fathers from varying racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, as well as fathers from varying family constellations (single fathers, same-sex fathers, kin fathers, stepfathers).

The post Reading with dad – Influences on fathers’ engagement in shared book reading and why it matters for children’s development appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• Children can develop fears from direct experiences, but they often develop them through information they receive from others.
• Childhood fears often form within the family context. Caregivers’ own fears and the way they talk about them influence children’s developing attitudes and fears.
• Being aware of how conversations with children affect the development of fear can help caregivers be more thoughtful about the information they convey so children form their own attitudes without caregiver bias.

Common Fears in Childhood

Fear is a critical emotion for survival. Across development, children follow a predictable pattern of the kinds of things they fear, beginning with strangers in infancy, ghosts or animals in early childhood, injury-related fears in older childhood, and socially driven fears by adolescence (LoBue, 2013). Childhood fears are considered a normal and healthy part of development, particularly when they are mild, age-appropriate and go away over time.

However, for some children, fears become maladaptive if they persist, become more intense, and impair children’s daily lives. Understanding how childhood fears are formed may help caregivers prevent extreme fears from forming and support children’s healthy development of fear.

Caregiver-child conversations form the basis of much of children’s attitudes and behaviors toward the world, including fear.

Origins of common fears: Why are we so afraid of snakes and spiders?

Across the globe, snakes and spiders are two of the most commonly and intensely feared animals, making these creatures prime candidates for exploring fear development. While some snakes and spiders can be harmful to humans in specific contexts, most humans in industrialized and urban regions of the world have very little experience with these animals in their day-to-day lives. So why are we so afraid of snakes and spiders?

Research suggests that humans have specialized mechanisms to rapidly detect and avoid evolutionary threats (like snakes and spiders), which promotes survival across generations (Öhman & Mineka, 2001). However, humans are not necessarily born afraid of snakes and spiders. In fact, studies examining fear of snakes and spiders in infancy and early childhood show that early in life, humans often show interest in and sometimes even approach these animals (LoBue et al., 2013). This suggests that fears of snakes and spiders are learned and developed over time.

Furthermore, like adults, children have even fewer encounters with snakes and spiders in the real world, making it unlikely that children develop their fear of these animals through direct and scary encounters with them. Since most children lack direct and negative experiences with snakes and spiders, they likely develop fear of these creatures in other ways.

How caregiver-child conversations shape childhood fears

One of the ways children learn about unfamiliar things is through interactions with their caregivers. Caregiver-child conversations form the basis of much of children’s attitudes and behaviors toward the world, including fear. In fact, most children attribute the origins of their fears to receiving negative information about the object of their fear (Ollendick & King, 1991). This is particularly true for things they have little experience with, like snakes and spiders.

Photo: Ketut Subiyanto. Pexels.

To further explore the impact of caregiver input on childhood fears, in a recent study, my colleagues and I examined the kinds of information parents provide their children about different kinds of animals. We wanted to see whether and how conversations about snakes and spiders differ from conversations about less commonly feared animals (Reider et al., 2022).

To explore this question, 27 parents (22 mothers, 5 fathers) and their 4- to 6-year-olds (12 females, 15 males) read a picture book of animals, including commonly feared creatures like snakes and spiders, as well as similar animals that are less commonly feared, like frogs, turtles, and lizards. We then compared the kinds of emotional information parents provided to their children in their conversations about the different animals.

When we examined the content of parent-child conversations, we found that both parents and children provided more negative information (e.g., “That’s pretty scary,” “I don’t like spiders”) and less positive information (e.g., “He’s cute,” “I like it”) about snakes and spiders. They also provided less positive information about snakes and spiders than they did about frogs, turtles, and lizards.

Furthermore, parents and children also reported more fear of snakes and spiders than of the other animals in the book. This suggests that conversations about commonly feared animals like snakes and spiders contain more negative and less positive information, which may contribute to children developing fear toward these animals.

Informing parents about the impact of their conversations on children’s learning led those parents to use less negative information, and their children reported less fear toward snakes and spiders.

In the same study, we also explored whether we could change the emotional language input children receive about snakes and spiders, and whether changing the input would change children’s fear toward these creatures. A new group of 54 parents (44 mothers, 8 fathers, 2 legal guardians) and their young children (27 females, 27 males) read a similar picture book featuring snakes, spiders, lizards, and turtles, and we again examined the emotional input parents provided about each animal.

However, in this study, half of parents were first told to go through the book as they normally would with their child, while the other half were informed about how the negative information they provide during conversations with their children might shape their children’s fear of animals. They were also instructed to try to focus on the information they most wanted their children to learn about the animals.

Overall, parents and children in both groups still provided more negative information and were more fearful of snakes and spiders than of the other animals. However, informing parents about the impact of their conversations on children’s learning led those parents to use less negative information, and their children reported less fear toward snakes and spiders, though the effects were small.

Photo: pham manh. Pexels.

Additional studies on the effect of reducing negative input (and potentially increasing positive input) on children’s fear beliefs are needed to better understand how information may shape children’s fear of animals. However, our findings shed light on the idea that simply making parents aware of the impact of their conversations on children’s fear may change the input children receive and influence how fears are developed.

Broader implications for everyday conversations with children

The take-home message is simple: What we say to children matters. The information children receive from conversations with their caregivers helps shape how children form attitudes and engage with the world around them. In the case of animal fears, caregiver-child conversations about commonly feared animals like snakes and spiders are filled with negative input and lack of positive input, which may contribute to children’s fear development.

Changing the input in caregiver-child conversations may help reduce or prevent those fears from developing in the first place. Simply being aware of how speakers’ attitudes and beliefs are transmitted to children through everyday conversations may help caregivers remove their biases from conversations to help children form their own attitudes.

The post Input shapes the output: How caregiver-child conversations shape children’s fears appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• Baby girls tend to have bigger vocabularies than baby boys, but that might not be due to gendered parenting practices.
• Parents talk more to babies after the babies have said their first words, regardless of whether the baby is a boy or a girl.
• Caregivers can support language development by speaking with and responding to their infants, regardless of their child’s gender, age, or language abilities.

Why are baby girls more advanced in language development than baby boys?

On average, baby girls have better language skills than baby boys. Researchers have found that girls tend to say their first words earlier, say more words, and combine words into sentences earlier. Where does this gender difference come from?

Maybe caregivers talk more or differently with baby girls than with baby boys in ways that support early language development. While this could explain the gender difference in early language skills, prior studies investigating this possibility have yielded conflicting results, so it is unclear whether early language input differs by gender.

While it may look like caregivers talk more to girls than to boys, they are really talking to talkers more than to non-talkers.

Another possibility comes from evidence that caregivers are sensitive and responsive to their children’s language skills. For example caregivers are more likely to respond to speech-like vocalizations (like “bababa”) than to non-speech-like vocalizations (like crying or laughing). This means that parents might talk more to babies with better language skills. Since girls have better language skills than boys on average, it is difficult to figure out if differences are due to children’s gender or their language skills.

Studying gender differences in babies’ language environments

To untangle the roles of gender and early language skills, my colleague at Duke University, Elika Bergelson, and I conducted a study that asked: How does babies’ language experience differ depending on their gender and their language skills?

Our study used data from a year-long examination of children’s early language environments called SEEDLingS. We followed the language development of 44 children from ages 6 to 18 months. The children were growing up in the United States and learning English, and most were White from middle-class families.

Photo: Yan Krukau. Pexels.

When babies are 6 months old, they have not begun to talk, but they have started to understand words. Many babies say their first words around the time of their first birthday, and most become chatty toddlers within a year, by 18 months. By investigating infants across this age range, we captured changes in children’s language environments over time.

In our study, we collected monthly audio and video recordings from each family. We listened to the recordings and analyzed the nouns (like “apple” or “shoe”) that the babies heard and the nouns that the babies said. In total, our study analyzed more than 250,000 instances of nouns from more than 2,000 hours of recordings of babies’ language environments.

Baby girls had larger vocabularies than baby boys

We found that girls had bigger vocabularies than boys. On average, girls said 29 different nouns by the end of the study, while on average, boys said only said 11 unique nouns. This gender difference in vocabulary also increased over time, meaning that girls’ vocabularies grew faster than boys’.

Children play an active role in their language development – they influence their own language learning environments as they grow by engaging in conversation with their caregivers.

After replicating the finding that girls have bigger vocabularies than boys, we asked: Is this gender difference due to parents talking differently or talking more to girls than to boys? That is, could caregivers’ speech drive the gender difference in children’s vocabularies? To answer this question, we analyzed how many nouns the babies heard, depending on their age, gender, and whether they had said their first word yet.

Caregivers talked more to talkers, regardless of babies’ gender

Caregivers did not talk more to baby girls than to baby boys in our study. On average, babies heard 122 nouns per hour in the recordings, but this did not differ by children’s gender. However, both girls and boys heard more nouns after they began to talk. On average, babies heard 106 nouns per hour in the recordings before they started talking, but after they said their first word, they heard an average of 140 nouns per hour.

These findings suggest that girls’ early advantage in language skills may not be driven by caregivers talking more or differently to girls than to boys. Instead, babies’ first words led to significant changes in what they heard: Caregivers talked more to talkers. Remember, girls tend to start talking earlier and have larger vocabularies than boys. That means that while it may look like caregivers talk more to girls than to boys, they are really talking to talkers more than to non-talkers.

Photo: William Fortunato. Pexels.

We still do not know why baby girls have bigger vocabularies than baby boys. Perhaps this difference in language skills is driven by other differences in parents’ behavior, like touch or eye contact. Alternatively, biological differences may explain girls’ language advantage. For example, some research suggests that infants’ levels of sex hormones influence brain development in language-related regions. Researchers need to investigate these possibilities.

How can parents support their children’s early language development?

Our study found that girls’ vocabulary advantage might not be the result of gendered differences in caregivers’ speech to their babies. Instead, we discovered that babies’ language environments change when they start talking.

What does that mean for parents? The results of our study show that children play an active role in their language development – they influence their own language learning environments as they grow by engaging in conversation with their caregivers. However, caregivers also play a critical role. To support their children’s language development, caregivers can talk with and be responsive to their children, regardless of the children’s gender.

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