Gender Differences in Beliefs about Infant-Directed Speech: The Role of Family Dynamics

Kennison, Shelia M.; Byrd‐Craven, Jennifer

doi:10.1155/2015/871759

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Concomitantly, these trends may be explained by differing beliefs regarding child language development. For instance, in a survey of 180 female and 120 male undergraduates in the Midwest, Kennison and Byrd-Craven (2015) found that men were significantly less likely to believe that infantdirected speech was beneficial to infants' development. Moreover, significantly more men reported that using "baby talk" had been discouraged in their families.…”

Section: Parental Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Chatty Are Daddies? An Exploratory Study of Infants' Language Environments

Shapiro

Hippe

Ramírez

2021

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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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.

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Section: Parental Inputmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Chatty Are Daddies? An Exploratory Study of Infants' Language Environments

Shapiro

Hippe

Ramírez

2021

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…The research on the relation between paternal knowledge around language development and paternal language input is virtually nonexistent. One recent survey reported that males were significantly less likely to believe that parentese was beneficial to infants’ development compared to females, but participants were non‐parents (Kennison & Byrd‐Craven, 2015). To our knowledge, no other study to date explores this relation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habla conmigo, daddy! Fathers’ language input in North American bilingual Latinx families

Ramírez

Hippe

Correa

et al. 2022

Infancy

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“…One study found that first-time mothers were unsure of the rationale for using parentese with their infants, despite the fact that they seemed to recognize the importance of early language input to children's language learning (Whitmarsh, 2011). Another recent study reports that, compared to females, males were significantly less likely to believe that parentese was beneficial to infant development; however, participants in this study were non-parents (Kennison & Byrd-Craven, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 63%

What do parents really think? Knowledge, beliefs, and self-awareness of parentese in relation to its use in daylong recordings

Ferjan Ramírez

2023

First Language

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This study focuses on parental use of parentese: the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech produced by adults across cultures when they address infants. While previous research shows that parentese enhances language learning and processing, it is still unclear what drives the variability in the amount of parental parentese use. We report on the development of a survey related to parental beliefs, knowledge, and self-awareness of parentese, and the cross-validation of this survey with daylong recordings in which parental parentese was measured through observation. Forty mother–father (18 monolingual English and 22 bilingual Spanish/English) U.S. families with infants between 3 and 24 months of age participated. Scores on the parentese questionnaire showed wide variability, suggesting that many parents were unsure about the effects of parentese on infant language development, and had limited self-awareness of their own parentese use. Almost half of the parents claimed that they talked to their child ‘like an adult’, and a similar number disagreed with the claim that parentese can support language learning. Our observational assessment of parentese demonstrated that all mothers and all fathers used parentese when talking to their infants; mothers in an average of 81% and fathers in an average of 69% of child-directed segments. Importantly, maternal parentese knowledge/beliefs scores, as well as their self-reported parentese use, were significantly positively correlated with observed parentese use; these relations were not significant for fathers. These results demonstrate that maternal and paternal links between beliefs, self-awareness, and behavior may be distinct, emphasizing the importance of studying all caregivers and using observational methodologies. More broadly, a thorough understanding of the factors that shape infants’ language environments contributes to theories of language acquisition and can aid in intervention design.

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Gender Differences in Beliefs about Infant-Directed Speech: The Role of Family Dynamics

Cited by 8 publications

References 34 publications

How Chatty Are Daddies? An Exploratory Study of Infants' Language Environments

How Chatty Are Daddies? An Exploratory Study of Infants' Language Environments

Habla conmigo, daddy! Fathers’ language input in North American bilingual Latinx families

What do parents really think? Knowledge, beliefs, and self-awareness of parentese in relation to its use in daylong recordings

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