Going Beyond Input Quantity: Wh‐Questions Matter for Toddlers' Language and Cognitive Development

Abstract

There are clear associations between the overall quantity of input children are exposed to and their vocabulary acquisition. However, by uncovering specific features of the input that matter, we can better understand the mechanisms involved in vocabulary learning. We examine whether exposure to wh-questions, a challenging quality of the communicative input, is associated with toddlers' vocabulary and later verbal reasoning skills in a sample of low-income, African-American fathers and their 24-month-old children (n = 41). Dyads were videotaped in free play sessions at home. Videotapes were transcribed and reliably coded for sheer quantity of fathers' input (number of utterances) as well as the number of wh-questions fathers produce. Children's productive vocabulary was measured at 24 months using the McArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory MCDI (completed by the mothers), and children's verbal reasoning skills were measured 1 year later using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Results indicate that the overall quantity of father talk did not relate to children's vocabulary or reasoning skills. However, fathers' use of wh-questions (but not other questions) related to both vocabulary and reasoning outcomes. Children's responses to wh-questions were more frequent and more syntactically complex, measured using the mean length of utterance (MLU), than their responses to other questions. Thus, posing wh-questions to 2-year-olds is a challenging type of input, which elicits a verbal response from the child that likely helps build vocabulary and foster verbal reasoning abilities.

Language Use Contributes to Expressive Language Growth: Evidence From Bilingual Children

“…Proposals for why output would have a general benefit for children's language growth include the suggestions that the requirement to talk challenges children and prods them to figure out the parts of the linguistic system they need to produce replies (Hoff‐Ginsberg, , , ; Rowe et al., ), and that talking “forces the learner to process the language in a way that only hearing it does not” (Bohman et al., , p. 339). Perhaps output also benefits language learning because output is essentially retrieval.…”

“…The literature on first language acquisition includes many findings that are consistent with the hypothesis that output plays a role in language acquisition: The frequency with which adults pose certain types of questions that elicit talk from children is positively associated with children's language growth (Hoff‐Ginsberg, , , ; Rowe, Leech, & Cabrera, ). The number of conversational turns in adult–child interaction, recorded and analyzed using the LENA system (Xu, Yapanel, & Gray, ), is a better predictor of children's later scores on an omnibus measure of language skills than the amount of talk produced within the child's range of hearing (Zimmerman et al., ).…”

Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing

“…However, variation in input quality also has a role. Several indicators of quality, including lexical diversity, use of decontextualized language, and properties of verbal and nonverbal interaction are also important [55][56][57], with computational modeling showing that some quality indicators, such as lexical diversity, are more important than input quantity [58].…”

Maternal Language and Child Vocabulary Mediate Relations Between Socioeconomic Status and Executive Function During Early Childhood

“…Prior analyses of the current sample showed that maternal vocabulary at 6 months and change in maternal vocabulary between 6 and 15 months each independently predicted child cognitive ability at 15 months (Burchinal, Vernon‐Feagans, Cox, & Key Family Life Project Investigators, ). In another sample, parent use of wh‐questions during a play session at 24 months was positively associated with children's reasoning skills at 36 months (Rowe, Leech, & Cabrera, ). Maternal language input has also been associated with children's theory of mind (de Rosnay & Hughes, ), including a study in which maternal use of words relating to mental states (e.g., think, believe) in a sample of children between 2 and 4 years of age was associated with theory of mind 12 months later (Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, ).…”