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Researchers underline the role of rich and diverse input, as well as intensive use of both languages, in gaining the most advantages from multilingualism (Luk & Bialystok, 2013). Parental knowledge about language development and their attitudes towards multilingualism may impact their practices and mediate childrens’ language outcomes (Hancock, 2019). Parents are the first language teachers of their children, and the way they communicate has a big impact on language development (Reese et al., 2010). Research shows that the knowledge about language and cognitive development that parents have when the child is born influences their later caregiving behaviors (Leung & Suskind, 2020). Parental knowledge can be successfully modified (e.g. Leung et al., 2018; List et al., 2021) and as a result the quality and quantity of child-directed parental speech may be improved (see Reese et al., 2010 for review). The quantity and quality of language input is crucial for later language acquisition. This is true for every language that a child learns if he/she is raised in a multilingual environment (Hoff et al., 2014). The research on the correlates of good language development lead to the number of recommendations on how to communicate with children to enhance their development (Landry et al., 2006) and strategies that can be applied by caregivers in everyday life (e.g. Support, Ask, Expand by Boyce et al., 2010; 1,2,3, Tell Me What You See, Brannon & Dauksas, 2014; Comment, Ask and Respond by Cole et al., 2002). As multilingual children are at risk of insufficient language exposure to develop all of their languages to a functional degree, they are an especially interesting target group for parent-addressed interventions (Barrera & Bauer, 2003). Early language intervention targeted at parents may serve the purpose of supporting parents in developing high-quality interactions with their children. Such intervention can be particularly efficient if it begins before the child starts to speak (Adamson et al., 2020). Although there is a number of research providing parent-oriented interventions early language development targeting bilingual populations, almost all of them were addressed to families with low socioeconomic status (SES) (Durán et al., 2016). Researchers underline that to benefit most from bilingual upbringing, children need support, whether they develop typically or not, and that promoting high-quality interactions with caregivers is essential in this context (Fibla et al., 2022). Secondly, the interventions available so far are rarely provided at the very early stage of childrens’ lives. This is essential, since there is evidence that the interventions that started earlier show better outcomes in childrens’ language (Love et al., 2005). After reviewing the content of the parent-oriented language interventions that were found to be efficient according to research, we created a workshop addressed to Polish-speaking parents who live in Norway and are expecting a child. We wanted to verify whether we can enhance childrens’ language development (in either one or both their languages) by teaching parents about language development (in general and bilingual in particular) and modify parental attitudes towards the behaviors that were scientifically proven to support early language development. The intervention differs from those evaluated in the previous research in several ways. First and foremost, it is addressed to parents of bilingual children, but in general – not only those who are undereducated or of households of low income. Secondly, it is provided even before the child is born (or within the first three months of his/her life). Both these factors indicate that the program would have the preventive character, being provided before any language delays might be observed, for the population in need of a special attendance, in the critical time. Aiming to create an intervention of preventive character we were trying to maintain a balance between the costs of providing the intervention and its effectiveness. Which resulted in the third factor distinguishing this intervention among others. It has a form of on-line workshop, involving certain aspects of practical implementation of knowledge. The intervention program follows the guidelines for effective language interventions and covers, to some extent, all the strategies recommended by Biel and collaborators (2020): building upon background knowledge, explicitly describing and illustrating content, providing opportunities to actively apply and generalize learned content in real-world contexts, and supporting metacognition (e.g., reflection and self-monitoring) throughout the training process. At the same time it is relatively low-cost, not demanding traveling or one-on-one meetings. This preregistration is part of a bigger, longitudinal study involving providing an intervention (experimental – enhancing parental knowledge about child’s language development or control – enhancing parental knowledge about healthy sleep patterns in children). The study consists of five timepoints, but the present pre-registration covers only one of these – TP4, measuring childrens’ language development at 18 months. The data from the first two timepoints are already collected. They measured an increase in parental knowledge about language development and behaviors that promote it (between TP1 just before and TP2 just after the intervention was provided). They are described in a different preregistration that can be accessed at https://osf.io/7a2zp. TP3, measuring childrens’ language development at 12 months is ongoing and going to be preregistered in the OSF system soon. The data collection on TP4 (the only one that is the subject of this preregistration) is starting at the beginning of June 2023. We plan to submit a registered report about how we will analyze TP5 (concerning childrens language development at 24 months) in the near future.

Family socioeconomic status (SES) can indirectly influence child language development, as it is linked to the quantity and quality of speech heard by children (Hoff, 2003; Rowe, 2012). Discrepancies between low- and high-SES families in the quantity of language input may be as high as 30 million word tokens heard by a child over the first three years of life (Hart & Risley, 1995). Such diminished quantity of speech heard by children directly impedes their early language development (Hart & Risley, 1995) and has lasting consequences for their subsequent school outcomes (Hart & Risley, 2003). However, since many Polish toddlers spend most of their waking time outside of home, in kindergartens or day cares, it is difficult to extract the influence of family SES on their development. Such opportunity came with the spread of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and the general lockdown in Poland, which forced all the children to stay at home with the parents. In the present study we investigate home activities and parental interactions with 8-36 month-old infants and toddlers in families with various SES background. We compare children’s early vocabulary knowledge at the beginning of lockdown and after the kindergartens are re-opened. The present study is part of a larger international project “Social isolation and vocabulary development: insights from families with varying SES” (https://osf.io/3ayc6/).

Establishing the developmental trajectory in children’s language acquisition may inform both the psycholinguistic theory and practice (e.g., educators and speech therapists), which individual patterns of language development are typical in the population. The issue of typical developmental trajectory gains additional importance in the case of bilingual children (e.g. Paradis et al., 2011). Bilingual setting is quantitatively different from that of monolinguals: there are two languages present in the child’s environment and thus a bilingual child might hear less of each language when compared to the input received by a monolingual child (e.g. Hoff et al., 2012; Unsworth, 2016). In the present study, as part of the StarWords project, we investigate the early language milestones in bilinguals. We will study Polish-Norwegian and Polish-English bilingual children and compare them to Polish monolingual peers. The bilingual children’s early language will be also investigated in both their languages (L1 Polish + L2 English/Norwegian). The linguistic milestones under investigation will include: babbling, 1, 10, 50 first words; the first multiword utterance, the first 3-word utterance, the first 4-word utterance. The method of using multiple data points (i.e. 10, 50 words) was employed before in studies of cross-linguistic early language trajectories (e.g. de Boysson-Bardies & Vihman, 1991). The 10-word milestone was one of 26 milestones identified from a list of screening instruments to empirically reflect language development in children aged 1 to 6 years (Visser-Bochane et al., 2020). Information on children’ early language milestones will be gathered with a specially designed mobile app in which parents and/or guardians will enter words and utterances their children produce in real time or shortly after the production. By collecting information on the children’s linguistic environment (via the same app), we will be able to directly link the quantity and quality of reported language exposure to the children’s language performance in each language (the exact timing of particular language milestones). This study is related to the StarWords project (full title: “New perspectives on assessing early language development in mono- and bilingual context: a web-based interactive parental report in a longitudinal study”). de Boysson-Bardies, B., & Vihman, M. M. (1991). Adaptation to Language: Evidence from Babbling and First Words in Four Languages. Language, 67(2), 297–319. https://doi.org/10.2307/415108 Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M., & Parra, M. (2012). Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 39(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000910000759 Paradis, J., Genesee, F., & Crago, M. B. (Eds.). (2011). Dual language development and disorders: A handbook on bilingualism and second language learning (2nd ed). Paul H. Brookes Pub. Co. Unsworth, S. (2016). Quantity and quality of language input in bilingual language development. In Bilingualism across the lifespan: Factors moderating language proficiency (pp. 103–121). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14939-007 Visser-Bochane, M. I., Reijneveld, S. A., Krijnen, W. P., Schans, C. P. van der, & Luinge, M. R. (2020). Identifying Milestones in Language Development for Young Children Ages 1 to 6 Years. Academic Pediatrics, 20(3), 421–429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2019.07.003

Establishing the developmental trajectory in children’s language acquisition may inform both the psycholinguistic theory and practice (e.g., educators and speech therapists), which individual patterns of language development are typical in the population. The issue of typical developmental trajectory gains additional importance in the case of bilingual children (e.g. Paradis et al., 2011). Bilingual setting is quantitatively different from that of monolinguals: there are two languages present in the child’s environment and, as a consequence, a bilingual child hears less of each language when compared to the input received by a monolingual child (e.g. Hoff et al., 2012; Unsworth, 2016). Vocabulary spurt, i.e. a transition to rapid word-learning (Goldfield & Reznick, 1990) is one of developmental changes found in many children (but not all, c.f. Ganger & Brent, 2004). It is suggested that in order to build extensive vocabularies, children cannot employ a steady rate of learning, but at some point (typically in their second year of life) have to show an accelerated word-learning. Researchers have used many different methods to operationalize this vocabulary spurt but Ganger & Brent (2004) suggest that this spurt should be identified as a transition between a slow word learning stage and a faster word learning stage (and not a gradually increasing learning rate) and that the faster word learning stage should be sustained for some period of time. In the present study, as part of the StarWords project, will investigate whether children’s lexicons show a vocabulary spurt, as operationalized by Ganger & Brent, and we will extend their investigations to both monolingual and bilingual children. We will study Polish-Norwegian and Polish-English bilingual children and compare them to Polish monolingual peers. Moreover, the bilingual children’s early language will be investigated in both their languages (L1 Polish + L2 English/Norwegian). Information on child language outcomes will be gathered with a specially designed mobile app in which parents and/or guardians will enter words and utterances their children produce in real time or shortly after the production. This study is related to the StarWords project (full title: “New perspectives on assessing early language development in mono- and bilingual context: a web-based interactive parental report in a longitudinal study”). Ganger, J., & Brent, M. R. (2004). Reexamining the Vocabulary Spurt. Developmental Psychology, 40(4), 621–632. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.40.4.621 Goldfield, B. A., & Reznick, J. S. (1990). Early lexical acquisition: Rate, content, and the vocabulary spurt. Journal of Child Language, 17(1), 171–183. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900013167 Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M., & Parra, M. (2012). Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 39(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000910000759 Paradis, J., Genesee, F., & Crago, M. B. (Eds.). (2011). Dual language development and disorders: A handbook on bilingualism and second language learning (2nd ed). Paul H. Brookes Pub. Co. Unsworth, S. (2016). Quantity and quality of language input in bilingual language development. In Bilingualism across the lifespan: Factors moderating language proficiency (pp. 103–121). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14939-007

The project is a part of the StarWords: a study of parental report on words. The current project focuses on the relations between the sleep patterns, breastfeeding and language development of young children. We will investigate whether sleep patterns (consecutive daytime sleeping durations, consecutive nighttime sleeping durations, ratio of consecutive daytime sleeping durations to consecutive nighttime sleeping durations, total length of sleeping) and breastfeeding patterns (whether the child is breastfed at a given age, total length of breastfeeding) are related to the very early language development (emergence of the bubbling, earliest words and multiword utterances, CDI scores) in monolingual and bilingual children. The study has a longitudinal design. The families will be invited to join the study as soon as the children are born (but they will be also allowed to join later until the children are younger than 24 months). The families will be asked to download and use the mobile application developed for the purposes of the StarWords project (see: https://multilada.pl/en/projects/starwords/). In the application, the families will be asked to type in the gestures, words and multiword combinations used by the children. Additionally to the frequent regular reports about the new gestures, words and multiword combinations, the caregivers will be asked to complete MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) when the children are about 16 months old (CDI - Words and Gestures) and when the children are about 26 months old (CDI - Words and Sentences). During the project, each month the families will be asked about the sleep patterns, and once the child is 12 months old, the family will be asked about breastfeeding (and if the child is breastfed at the age of 12 months, they will be asked every three months whether breastfeeding is continued). Previous studies have analysed the effects of breastfeeding and sleep patterns on language (and broader cognitive) development only separately. Generally, breastfeeding has a positive impact on language development, especially in populations under the risk of developing language impairment (see Smith, 2015, for review). In particular, parents of children who were breastfed longer than 3 months were less concerned about their language development, and the effect was particularly pronounced if breastfeeding was longer than 9 months (Dee at al., 2007). The length of breastfeeding was also positively correlated with the likelihood of polysyllabic babbling at the age of 8 months (Vestergaard et al., 1999), as well as with expressive and receptive communication scores at the age of 18 months (Leventakou et al., 2015). Another study showed that even breastfeeding for more than 12 months was beneficial for toddlers' language development (Iqbal et al., 2017). Regarding the sleep patterns, it appears that sleep consolidation is associated with maturation of sleep-wake rhythms. In other words, the day/night sleep duration ratio which is naturally decreasing with child development (i.e. in development children tend to sleep more at night and less during day) may be a good index of sleep maturation (Dionne et al., 2011). It was shown that the day/night sleep duration ratio at the age of 6 and 18 months (but not 30 months) is weakly related to the language outcomes (CDI scores) at the age of 18 and 30 months, and to receptive vocabulary scores at the age of 60 months (Dionne et al., 2011). Dearing et al. 2001 also found positive influence of sleep patterns on language development (comprehension and production). They focused on children’s circadian sleep regulation (rhythms in sleep and wakefulness during the 24 hour cycle) and found that children who were more rhythmic in their sleep at 7 and 19 months had higher mental development scores at 24 months and higher language scores at 36 months. On the other hand, although Dionne et al., 2011, showed that the total number of hours slept has no impact on the language scores (in contrast to the day/night sleep ratio), some studies showed that children who slept less than 10 or 11 hours per day at the age of 29 months presented lower receptive vocabulary scores at the age of 5 years (Touchette et al., 2007). Finally, the sleep patterns and breastfeeding are not independent. At the age of 6 months, breastfed children are more likely to wake up during the night (Galabally et a., 2013), although the total number of slept hours does not necessarily differ between breastfed and non-breastfed infants (Demrici et al., 2012). Another study on 1.5-year-old toddlers showed however that whereas daytime naps induce a longer nighttime sleep, nighttime breastfeeding may decrease the duration of nighttime sleep (Nakagawa et al., 2021). It appears that the relations between breastfeeding, sleep patterns and language development may not be clear: whereas both breastfeeding and longer sleep increase vocabulary scores, breastfeeding may decrease the sleep duration. Also, it has not been studied whether the patterns of the relations across sleeping, breastfeeding and language development are stable or change with child development. This study is related to the StarWords project (full title: “New perspectives on assessing early language development in mono- and bilingual context: a web-based interactive parental report in a longitudinal study”). Dearing, E., McCartney, K., Marshall, N. L., & Warner, R. M. (2001). Parental reports of children’s sleep and wakefulness: Longitudinal associations with cognitive and language outcomes. Infant Behavior and Development, 24(2), 151–170. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(01)00074-1 Dee, D. L., Li, R., Lee, L.-C., & Grummer-Strawn, L. M. (2007). Associations Between Breastfeeding Practices and Young Children’s Language and Motor Skill Development. Pediatrics, 119(S92). https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2006-2089N Demirci, J. R., Braxter, B. J., & Chasens, E. R. (2012). Breastfeeding and short sleep duration in mothers and 6-11-month-old infants. Infant behavior & development, 35(4), 884–886. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2012.06.005 Dionne, G., Touchette, E., Forget-Dubois, N., Petit, D., Tremblay, R. E., Montplaisir, J. Y., & Boivin, M. (2011). Associations Between Sleep-Wake Consolidation and Language Development in Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Twin Study. Sleep, 34(8), 987–995. https://doi.org/10.5665/SLEEP.1148 Galbally, M., Lewis, A. J., McEgan, K., Scalzo, K., & Islam, F. A. (2013). Breastfeeding and infant sleep patterns: An Australian population study. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 49(2), E147–E152. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpc.12089 Iqbal, M. I., Rafique, G., & Ali, S. A. (2017). The Effect of Breastfeeding on the Cognitive and Language Development of Children Under 3 Years of Age: Results of Balochistan-Early Childhood Development Project. 5(2), 9. Leventakou, V., Roumeliotaki, T., Koutra, K., Vassilaki, M., Mantzouranis, E., Bitsios, P., Kogevinas, M., & Chatzi, L. (2015). Breastfeeding duration and cognitive, language and motor development at 18 months of age: Rhea mother–child cohort in Crete, Greece. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 69, 232–239. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2013-202500 Nakagawa, M., Ohta, H., Shimabukuro, R., Asaka, Y., Nakazawa, T., …, & Kusakawa, I. (2021). Daytime nap and nighttime breastfeeding are associated with toddlers’ nighttime sleep. Scientific Reports, 11: 3028. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81970-6 Smith, J. M. (2015). Breastfeeding and language outcomes A review of the literature. Journal of Communication Disorders, 57, 29–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2015.04.002 Touchette, É., Petit, D., Séguin, J. R., Boivin, M., Tremblay, R. E., & Montplaisir, J. Y. (2007). Associations between sleep duration patterns and behavioral/cognitive functioning at school entry. Sleep, 30(9), 1213-1219. Vestergaard, M., Obel, C., Henriksen, T., Sørensen, H., Skajaa, E., & Østergaard, J. (1999). Duration of breastfeeding and developmental milestones during the latter half of infancy. Acta Paediatrica, 88(12), 1327–1332. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1651-2227.1999.tb01045.x

Stemming from an existing pre-registered project, on the role of SES and home activities on early language development in 8-36-month-old infants (https://osf.io/r85fw) during the first Covid-19 lockdown period in Spring 2020 (March-September 2020), the current project examines, across 11 countries, the impact of lockdown on infants’ well-being. In particular, it aims at evaluating how activities that young children engaged in during lockdown (with or without a parent) and their language skills impacted their well-being (cf. details below), and how infants’ well-being impacted their vocabulary gains, in production and comprehension, during lockdown.

This study is a part of the StarWords project (full title: “New perspectives on assessing early language development in mono- and bilingual context: a web-based interactive parental report in a longitudinal study”; http://starwords.eu/). The main goal of the current study is to provide detailed information about the characteristics of the earliest words spoken by monolingual children. The study follows the language development of young children (Polish monolinguals) from the age of saying the first words until the age of 2-3 years. Individually for each participant, we collect information about the spoken words with continuous parental reports via a mobile app. Parents provide information about the forms and the meanings of the words used by the children as well as the date of first usage of the words. The words collected from parents will be coded for morphological, phonological and semantic features. Additionally, the data will be cross-validated with the existing data about word learning such as subjective age of acquisition norms and CDI norms, as well as with other psycholinguistic word characteristics such as subjective frequency, imageability, concreteness and babiness. Our aim is to verify whether the age of word emergence may be predicted by such characteristics as length, phonological complexity, morphological complexity and semantics, as well as some psycholinguistic word properties (imageability, babiness and concreteness). Our second aim is to verify the validity of collected data by comparing them to existing norms (subjective age of acquisition, norms for CDI) and frequency sources (frequencies in child-directed speech, subjective frequency).

Researchers underline the role of rich and diverse input, as well as intensive use of both languages, in gaining the most advantages from multilingualism (Luk & Bialystok, 2013). Parental knowledge about language development and their attitudes towards multilingualism may impact their practices and mediate children’s language outcomes (Hancock, 2019). Parents are the first language teachers of their children, and the way they communicate has a big impact on language development (Reese et al., 2010). Research shows that the knowledge about language and cognitive development that parents have when the child is born influences their later caregiving behaviors (Leung & Suskind, 2020). Parental knowledge can be successfully modified (e.g. Leung et al., 2018; List et al., 2021) and as a result the quality and quantity of child-directed parental speech may be improved (see Reese et al., 2010 for review). As multilingual children are at risk of insufficient language exposure to develop all of their languages to a functional degree, they are an especially interesting target group for parent-addressed interventions (Barrera & Bauer, 2003). Researchers underline that to benefit most from bilingual upbringing, children need support, whether they develop typically or not, and that promoting high-quality interactions with caregivers is essential (Fibla et al., 2022). Early language intervention targeted at parents may serve the purpose of supporting parents in developing high-quality interactions with their children. Such intervention can be particularly efficient if it begins before the child starts to speak (Adamson et al., 2020). After reviewing the content of the parent-oriented language interventions that were shown to be efficient according to research, we created a workshop addressed to Polish-speaking parents who live in Norway and are expecting a child. We wanted to verify whether we can increase the level of parental knowledge about language development (in general and bilingual in particular) and modify parental attitudes towards the behaviors supporting early language development even before the child is born (or in the first three months of his/her life). This preregistration is part of a bigger, longitudinal study involving providing an intervention (experimental - enhancing parental knowledge about child’s language development or control - enhancing parental knowledge about healthy sleep patterns in children). The study consists of five timepoints, but the present pre-registration covers only two of these. The first timepoint of observation is measured just before the intervention is provided (TP1, we check the parental knowledge about language development and behaviors that promote it). Then, another timepoint is measured just after the intervention is provided (TP2, again, we check the parental knowledge about language development and behaviors that promote it). Other timepoints included in the project are measuring child’s language development at 12, 18 and 24 months, but these will not be analyzed in the present pre-registration.