Parent Input Styles and Toddlers’ Word Learning

• In Event: 3-237 - New Perspectives on Early Language Input, Learning Outcomes, and SES

Integrative Statement

Parents who use more words and more different words with their toddlers have children with larger vocabularies (e.g. Hart & Risley, 1995; Huttenlocher et al., 2010; Rowe, 2012). However, parents not only differ in the quantity and diversity of their input, but also in the style in which they interact with their children. It is unclear how the interactive styles parents spontaneously adopt may influence children’s word learning. Parenting literature suggests two dimensions of parenting that are important to children’s learning: a cognitive dimension and an affective dimension (Hindman & Morrison, 2012). The cognitive dimension involves the domain-specific supports that parents provide to help children acquire knowledge and skills in learning situations (e.g., labeling). The affective dimension includes domain-general supports that parents provide to help children maintain their involvement in learning tasks (e.g., positive feedback). The current study examined the cognitive and affective support styles that parents adopted in a word-teaching task in relation to their toddler’s word learning and engagement.
Participants were 36 middle-class parents and their toddlers (M = 20 months). Parents and children were videotaped during a word-teaching task (i.e., the parent taught the child a novel name for a novel object during a free play interaction). Parental utterances were transcribed verbatim and coded for cognitive support (e.g., labeling, providing and eliciting information) and autonomy support (e.g., following the child’s lead, providing positive evaluation). Children’s engagement was measured by coding their elicited and non-elicited contributions. Children’s word learning (i.e., ability to recognize and process the novel word) was assessed using the Looking-While-Listening task (Fernald, Zangl, Portillo, & Marchman, 2008) and vocabulary was assessed using the MacArthur-Bates CDI and used as a covariate.
Two parental cognitive support styles were identified via hierarchical cluster analyses (Ward’s linkage method): “Cognitive Scaffolders” who focused on asking children to label or act on the novel object and on providing and eliciting information about the novel object and “Labelers” who focused on labeling the novel object for the child. Similarly, two parental autonomy support styles were identified: “Followers” who focused on following the child’s lead and providing positive evaluations and “Non-followers” who used other diverse ways to engage the child. A Fisher’s exact test showed that parents who were “Cognitive Scaffolders” were not necessarily “Followers”, p > .05. Hence, parental cognitive and autonomy styles were relatively independent. Children of “Cognitive Scaffolders” had more advanced word learning (i.e., were better at recognizing and processing the novel word), p < .05 (see Table 1), and children of “Followers” were more engaged (i.e., provided more elicited and non-elicited contributions) in the word-teaching task, ps < .05, even after controlling for children’s prior vocabulary (see Table 2). Children’s word learning was not related to their engagement, p > .05. Parents’ word types, tokens, and use of individual cognitive and autonomy support moves did not predict children’s recognition of the novel word, ps > .05. Findings highlight the unique contributions of parental cognitive and autonomy support styles to toddlers’ word learning and engagement.

Authors

• Ran Wei, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Samuel Ronfard, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Diana Leyva, Davidson College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meredith Rowe, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author