Small Talk: A Community Research Collaboration to Increase Parental Provision of Language to Children

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Early language input contributes to children’s healthy brain development and sets the stage for life-long achievement and wellness. Parents vary in their ability to offer rich language support within the home environment due to social and contextual factors. There is a lack of research on the effectiveness of a universal prevention approach to equip all parents to provide an enriching home language environment. A team including university researchers, a public library, and a community non-profit agency worked together to test the effectiveness of a universal, community-based intervention to increase parents’ child-directed speech, back-and-forth interactions with their child, and knowledge of child development. Over a period of 2 years, three cohorts of parents and caregivers completed the program (n = 153). Using translational research principles, a pre/post longitudinal repeated measures data analytic strategy examined the growth in parent talk (total number of adult words and conversational turns directed to the child) and parent knowledge of child development. This objective quantitative language data was collected automatically, with innovative wearable technology that was a part of the intervention and data collection. In each of the cycles of the intervention, a significant increase in the amount of child-directed speech and in the number of conversational turns between the caregiver and child was demonstrated. In addition, parents significantly increased their knowledge of child development. Conclusion: Universal programs delivered in the community have potential to help parents provide the type of enriching language environments that lead to optimal brain development for young children.