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Effects of Time-Varying Parent Input on Children’s Language Outcomes Differ for Vocabulary and Syntax
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Effects of Time-Varying Parent Input on Children’s Language Outcomes Differ for Vocabulary and Syntax

Catriona Silvey, Özlem Ece Demir-Lira, Susan Goldin-Meadow and Stephen W Raudenbush
Psychological science, Vol.32(4), pp.95679762097055-548
03/15/2021
DOI: 10.1177/0956797620970559
PMID: 33720801
url
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620970559View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Early linguistic input is a powerful predictor of children’s language outcomes. We investigated two novel questions about this relationship: Does the impact of language input vary over time, and does the impact of time-varying language input on child outcomes differ for vocabulary and for syntax? Using methods from epidemiology to account for baseline and time-varying confounding, we predicted 64 children’s outcomes on standardized tests of vocabulary and syntax in kindergarten from their parents’ vocabulary and syntax input when the children were 14 and 30 months old. For vocabulary, children whose parents provided diverse input earlier as well as later in development were predicted to have the highest outcomes. For syntax, children whose parents’ input substantially increased in syntactic complexity over time were predicted to have the highest outcomes. The optimal sequence of parents’ linguistic input for supporting children’s language acquisition thus varies for vocabulary and for syntax.

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