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Infant language predicts fathers’ vocabulary in infant-directed speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2019

Jean QUIGLEY  and
Elizabeth NIXON
Jean QUIGLEY*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Elizabeth NIXON
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
*
*Corresponding author: School of Psychology, Áras an Phiarsaigh, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. E-mail: quigleyj@tcd.ie
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Abstract

Research on sources of individual difference in parental Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) is limited and there is a particular lack of research on fathers’ compared to mothers’ speech. This study examined the predictive relations between infant characteristics and variability in paternal lexical diversity (LD) in dyadic free play with two-year-olds (M = 24.1 months, SD = 1.39, 35 girls). Ten minutes of interaction for sixty-four father–infant dyads were transcribed and multiple regression analyses were performed to examine the effects of a set of distal and proximal sources of infant influence on paternal LD. Fathers’ LD was predicted only by infant language, both standardised language scores and dynamic language measures, and was not predicted by infant age, gender, executive function, or temperament. Findings are discussed in the light of the complex interplay of factors contributing to variability in IDS and the infant's linguistic environment.

Keywords

fathers’ infant-directed speechlexical diversityinfant languageinteraction
Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 47 , Special Issue 1: The Influence of Input Quality and Communicative Interaction on Language Development Part 1 , January 2020 , pp. 146 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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