Promoting Early Language Development: Specific Maternal Responses Are Important

This finding might enhance pediatric clinicians' counseling of parents to promote language development.

Language development is mediated by both brain maturation and the environment. Parents' prompt and contingent responses to children's initiation of language are essential to the early acquisition of language. To learn what specific parental responses are associated with toddlers' language acquisition, researchers in Australia examined mothers' responsive behaviors in slow language acquirers participating in a larger study, which included a parent-completed 100-word standardized checklist of the child's vocabulary at age 18 months.

Of 1138 toddlers, 251 (22%) scored ≤20th percentile and entered the substudy. At age 24 months, children's language was assessed, and video recordings of mother–child free play were made. These were coded for six m…

Reviewing Author

Martin T. Stein, MD

Disclosures

Consultant / Advisory boardPearson Neuroscience Advisory Board

Speaker’s bureauAmerican Academy of Pediatrics

RoyaltiesElsevier, Inc.

Editorial boardsJournal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics