ERIC Number: EJ1310697
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Aug
Pages: 11
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: N/A
How Chatty Are Daddies? An Exploratory Study of Infants' Language Environments
Shapiro, Naomi Tachikawa; Hippe, Daniel S.; Ramírez, Naja Ferjan
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v64 n8 p3242-3252 Aug 2021
Purpose: Fathers play a critical but underresearched role in their children's cognitive and linguistic development. Focusing on two-parent families with a mother and a father, the present longitudinal study explores the amount of paternal input infants hear during the first 2 years of life, how this input changes over time, and how it relates to child volubility. We devote special attention to parentese, a near-universal style of infant-directed speech, distinguished by its higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation. Method: We examined the daylong recordings of the same 23 infants at ages 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months, given English-speaking families. The infants were recorded in the presence of their parents (mother-father dyads), who were predominantly White and ranged from mid to high socioeconomic status (SES). We analyzed the effects of parent gender and child age on adult word counts and parentese, as well as the effects of maternal and paternal word counts and parentese on child vocalizations. Results: On average, the infants were exposed to 46.8% fewer words and 51.9% less parentese from fathers than from mothers, even though paternal parentese grew at a 2.8-times faster rate as the infants aged. An asymmetry emerged where maternal word counts and paternal parentese predicted child vocalizations, but paternal word counts and maternal parentese did not. Conclusions: While infants may hear less input from their fathers than their mothers in predominantly White, mid-to-high SES, English-speaking households, paternal parentese still plays a unique role in their linguistic development. Future research on sources of variability in child language outcomes should thus control for parental differences since parents' language can differ substantially and differentially predict child language.
Descriptors: Fathers, Infants, Family Environment, Parent Child Relationship, Toddlers, Age Differences, Gender Differences, Mothers, Verbal Communication, Child Language, Language Acquisition, Predictor Variables
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Washington (Seattle)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A