The emergence of conversational turns as a function of parent coaching on language

Abstract

Previous research shows that parents’ use of parentese, a nearly universal speaking style distinguished by higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation contours, is associated with advances in children’s language learning. We recently showed that when parents are “coached” about the use of parentese when their infants are 6- and 10-months of age, they increase their use of parentese in child-directed speech, which has an immediate and positive effect on child babbling at 14 months. The present longitudinal follow-up study illuminates the mechanisms by which parentese enhanced children’s language growth in families who received parent coaching on the use of parentese. We demonstrate that, by 18-months of age, coached parents and their infants (n = 55) engaged in significantly more conversational turns compared to uncoached parents and infants (n = 24), p = 0.01, as measured by first-person LENA recordings in families’ homes. Furthermore, infants of coached parents showed enhanced language outcomes at 18 and 24 months, as measured by LENA recordings, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Questionnaires, and a vocabulary assessment in the laboratory. We propose that parentese enhances parent-child engagement in communicative turn-taking, thereby creating a positive feedback loop, which could further advance children’s language learning.