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Children learn math concepts long before they enter school. Across all cultures, children are exposed to number and spatial language to varying degrees during everyday home routines. Yet most studies of math talk occur in the lab and target non-Hispanic, English-speaking families. We expanded inquiry to the spontaneous math language (i.e., number and spatial language) of Spanish-speaking mothers and their 1- to 2-year-olds (N = 50) during home activities. Mothers varied enormously in their use of math language, and mother math language related to toddler math language, whereas mother non-math language did not. Children's math language both preceded and followed mother math talk, suggesting imitation and reinforcement as important processes in children's math language learning. Children also produced math language outside the context of mother input. Findings advance an understanding of children's early math language in natural settings and have implications for interventions aimed at promoting math skills in toddlers from diverse backgrounds.

Infants build knowledge by acting on the world. We conducted an ecologically grounded test of an embodied learning hypothesis: that infants' active engagement with objects in the home environment elicits caregiver naming and cascades to learning object names. Our home-based study extends laboratory-based theories to identify real-world processes that support infant word learning. Frame-by-frame coding of 2-hr video recordings of 32 mothers and their 18- to 23-month-old infants focused on infant manipulation and mother and infant naming of 245 unique objects. Objects manipulated by infants and/or named by mothers were more likely to appear in infants' vocabularies and spontaneous speech relative to nonmanipulated objects and objects that mothers did not name. Furthermore, the vocabularies of 5,520 infants hosted on Wordbank revealed an early age of acquisition of words for objects that mothers named and infants manipulated. Infants actively build object-word mappings from everyday engagements with objects in the context of social interactions.

As infants interact with the object world, they generate rich information about object properties and functions. Much of infant learning unfolds in the presence of caregivers, who talk about and act on the objects of infant play. Does mother joint engagement correspond to real-time changes in the complexity and duration of infant object interactions? We observed 38 mothers and their first-born infants (cross-sectional, 13, 18, and 23 months) during 2 h of everyday activity as infants freely navigated their home environments. Behavioral coding explored thousands of infant object interactions within and outside mother joint engagement. Object interactions involving exclusively simple play were shorter than complex play bouts. Critically, mothers' multimodal input (i.e., touching/gesturing toward and talking about the focal object) corresponded with more complex and longer play bouts than when mothers provided no input. Bouts involving complex play and multimodal input lasted 7.5 times longer than simple play bouts absent mother input. Moreover, "action-orienting talk" (e.g., "'Twist' it", "'Feed' dolly"), rather than talk per se, corresponded with longer bout duration and complexity. Notably, the association between joint engagement and play duration was not a function of mothers having more time to join. Analyses that eliminated short infant bouts and considered the timing of mothers' behaviors confirmed that mother input "extended" the duration of play bouts. As infants actively explore their environments, their object interactions change moment to moment in the presence of mothers' multimodal engagement.

Infants learn nouns during object-naming events--moments when caregivers name the object of infants' play (e.g., ball as infant holds a ball). Do caregivers also label the actions of infants' play (e.g., roll as infant rolls a ball)? We investigated connections between mothers' verb inputs and infants' actions. We video-recorded 32 infant-mother dyads for 2 hr at home (13 month olds, n = 16; 18 month olds, n = 16; girls, n = 16; White, n = 23; Asian, n = 2; Black, n = 1; other, n = 1; multiple races, n = 5; Hispanic/Latinx, n = 2). Dyads were predominantly from middle-class to upper middle-class households. We identified each manual verb (e.g., press, shake) and whole-body verb (e.g., kick, go) that mothers directed to infants. We coded whether infants displayed manual and/or whole-body actions during a 6-s window surrounding the verb (i.e., 3 s prior and 3 s after the named verb). Mothers' verbs and infant actions were largely congruent: Whole-body verbs co-occurred with whole-body actions, and manual verbs co-occurred with manual actions. Moreover, half of mothers' verbs corresponded precisely to infants' concurrent action (e.g., infant pressed button as mother said, "Press the button"). In most instances, mothers commented on rather than instigated infants' actions. Findings suggest that verb learning is embodied, such that infants' motor actions offer powerful cues to verb meanings. Furthermore, our approach highlights the value of cross-domain research integrating infants' developing motor and language skills to understand word learning.

Sperry, Sperry, and Miller (2018) aim to debunk what is called the 30-million-word gap by claiming that children from lower income households hear more speech than Hart and Risley (1995) reported. We address why the 30-million-word gap should not be abandoned, and the importance of retaining focus on the vital ingredient to language learning--quality speech directed to children rather than overheard speech, the focus of Sperry et al.'s argument. Three issues are addressed: Whether there is a language gap; the characteristics of speech that promote language development; and the importance of language in school achievement. There are serious risks to claims that low-income children, on average, hear sufficient, high-quality language relative to peers from higher income homes. [This article was published in "Child Development" (EJ1213901).]

Object play yields enormous benefits for infant development. However, little is known about natural play at home where most object interactions occur. We conducted frame-by-frame video analyses of spontaneous activity in two 2-h home visits with 13-month-old crawling infants and 13-, 18-, and 23-month-old walking infants (N = 40; 21 boys; 75% White). Regardless of age, for every infant and time scale, across 10,015 object bouts, object interactions were short (median = 9.8 s) and varied (transitions among dozens of toys and non-toys) but consumed most of infants' time. We suggest that infant exuberant object play--immense amounts of brief, time-distributed, variable interactions with objects--may be conducive to learning object properties and functions, motor skill acquisition, and growth in cognitive, social, and language domains.

Purpose: This longitudinal study assessed continuity and stability of productive language (vocabulary and grammar) and discourse features (turn-taking; asking and responding to questions) during mother-child play. Method: Parent-child language use in 119 Spanish-speaking, Mexican immigrant mothers and their children at two ages (M = 2.5 and 3.6 years) was evaluated from transcriptions of interactions. Results: Child productive language significantly increased over the year, whereas mothers showed commensurate increases in vocabulary diversity but very little change in grammatical complexity. Mother-child discourse was characterized by discontinuity: Mothers decreased their turn length and asked fewer questions while children increased on both measures. Rates of responding to questions remained high for both mothers and children even as children increased and mothers decreased over time. Mothers and children showed significant rank-order stability in productive language and measures of discourse. Mothers' rate of asking questions and children's responses to questions during the first interaction predicted children's receptive vocabulary a year later. Conclusions: As children become more sophisticated communicators, language input remains important, with discourse features growing in relevance. Children's early opportunities to respond to parents' questions in the context of play benefit their language skills. This work extends the evidence base from monolingual English-speaking families and is interpreted in the context of prior research on parenting practices in U.S. families of Mexican origin.

Parent-child reminiscing talk about positive and negative events provides children with unique opportunities to develop emotion competence. Very little work has involved families from low-income households and ethnically diverse backgrounds. We examined: 1) event valence (positive vs. negative) and ethnic differences in mother-child reminiscing talk; 2) relations between maternal reminiscing talk and child emotion references; and 3) relations between maternal reminiscing talk and child emotion understanding. Participants were 204 African American, Dominican, Mexican and Chinese mothers and their first-grade children (M age = 79.50 months) from low-income households. Mother-child dyads were videorecorded talking about past positive and negative shared events. Conversations were coded for the emotion content and style of mother reminiscing talk and child emotion references. Child emotion understanding was assessed using an emotion-labeling and emotion perspective-taking task. Mothers differed in their use of emotion content and reminiscing style by event valence and ethnicity. Mothers who used more emotion content during positive and negative events had children who produced more emotion references. Maternal reminiscing style (i.e., use of evaluations and repetitions) related to child emotion references. Maternal emotion content and reminiscing style did not relate to child emotion understanding. Findings highlight the role of mother-child reminiscing talk in the development of children's emotion competence.

We longitudinally examined the trajectories of Latine mothers' (N = 116) language input to their children during book-sharing interactions at four points in development, when children were between ages 2 and 5 years. Mother-child dyads were video-recorded sharing a wordless picture book, and transcriptions of mothers' and children's language yielded word types in Spanish and English at each assessment wave. Three distinct trajectories of change in mothers' dual-language use were identified. Some mothers shifted from Spanish-dominant input to more balanced input between English and Spanish; other mothers provided English-dominant input and used more English and less Spanish over time; and the remaining mothers were stable in their Spanish-dominant input across child ages. Mothers' immigration background, educational level, and children's preschool language experiences each uniquely predicted trajectories of maternal language input. In general, children showed similar trajectories as their mothers, although mismatch occurred for some dyads at the later ages. The dual-language environments of Latine children are dynamic and shaped by individual and contextual factors.

We examined the functions of mothers' speech to infants during two tasks -- book-sharing and bead-stringing -- in low-income, ethnically diverse families. Mexican, Dominican, and African American mothers and their infants were video-recorded sharing wordless books and toy beads in the home when infants were aged 1;2 and 2;0. Mothers' utterances were classified into seven categories (labels/descriptions, emotion/state language, attention directives, action directives, prohibitions, questions, and vocal elicitations) which were grouped into three broad language functions: referential language, regulatory language, and vocalization prompts. Mothers' ethnicity, years of education, years living in the United States, and infant sex and age related to mothers' language functions. Dominican and Mexican mothers were more likely to use regulatory language than were African American mothers, and African American mothers were more likely to use vocalization prompts than were Latina mothers. Vocalization prompts and referential language increased with mothers' education and Latina mothers' years living in the United States. Finally, mothers of boys used more regulatory language than did mothers of girls. Socio-cultural and developmental contexts shape the pragmatics of mothers' language to infants.

We examined associations between maternal writing support, math support, and directiveness and children's literacy and math outcomes. Participants were 208 African American, Dominican, Mexican, and Chinese mothers and their first-grade children from low-income households. Mothers were video-recorded playing a grocery game with their children (i.e., making a grocery list together and shopping at a pretend store), and videos were coded for maternal writing and math support and directiveness. Maternal directiveness related negatively to children's literacy and math outcomes, even after controlling for maternal education and ethnicity. Maternal ethnicity did not moderate the relations between maternal directiveness and child outcomes. Maternal writing support did not relate to children's literacy except for a negative association in Chinese families. Maternal math support did not relate to children's math outcomes across ethnicities. Findings can inform intervention programs about family practices that support first graders' academic skills across ethnicities.

SYNOPSIS: Objective. Toddlers learn language as they participate in everyday routines in the home environment. The Routine Language Intervention encourages caregivers to infuse language in everyday routines to support toddlers' language development. Design. Researchers collaborated with a Spanish-speaking, immigrant community in New York City to develop an intervention that is grounded in the routines that mothers commonly engage in with their toddlers. Altogether, 51 mothers participated in 6 months of group workshops and home visits. To test the efficacy of the intervention, mothers were videorecorded interacting with their toddlers at home before and after participating in the intervention. A comparison group of 12 families drawn from the same community was also videorecorded in their homes. Results. Mothers who participated in the Routine Language Intervention increased their speech to toddlers, nearly doubling word tokens and word types, and used more types and tokens than mothers in the matched comparison group. Increases in maternal speech were seen for words referring to targeted daily routines (e.g., mealtime, grooming, play and literacy) and extended to other words (e.g., unrelated household objects). Conclusions. Routine Language offers a culturally sensitive, easy-to-implement intervention that builds on families' everyday routines and yields benefits for toddlers' early language exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prevention trial tested the efficacy of "INSIGHTS into Children's Temperament" as compared to a Read Aloud attention control condition in reducing student disruptive behavior and enhancing student competence and teacher classroom management. Participants included 116 first and second grade students, their parents, and their 42 teachers in six inner city schools. Teachers completed the Sutter-Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory (SESBI) and the Teacher's Rating Scale of Child's Actual Competence and Social Acceptance (TRS) at baseline and again upon completion of the intervention. Boys participating in "INSIGHTS," compared with those in the Read Aloud program, showed a significant decline in attentional difficulties and overt aggression toward others. Teachers in "INSIGHTS," compared to those in the attention control condition, reported significantly fewer problems managing the emotional-oppositional behavior, attentional difficulties, and covert disruptive behavior of their male students. They also perceived the boys as significantly more cognitively and physically competent. (Contains 5 tables.)

We examined whether the early learning environment predicts children's 5th grade skills in 2,204 families from ethnically diverse, low-income backgrounds; tested the mediating roles of children's pre-kindergarten school-related skills and later learning environment; and asked whether lagged associations generalize across White, Black, Hispanic English-speaking, and Hispanic Spanish-speaking samples. Children's early learning environment comprised measures of literacy activities, the quality of mothers' engagements with children, and learning materials assessed at 14 months, 2 and 3 years, and at pre-kindergarten; learning environments were again assessed in 5th grade. At pre-kindergarten and in 5th grade, children were assessed on pre-academic and academic skills respectively. Early learning environments predicted children's 5th grade academic skills, and children's pre-kindergarten skills and 5th grade learning environment mediated longitudinal associations. The early learning environment supports the emergence of pre-academic skills that are stable into early adolescence, and pathways generalize across ethnic/racial groups.

Children's book-sharing and oral storytelling experiences were examined in 264 4-year-olds from low-income African-American, Dominican, Mexican, and Chinese families in the United States. Mothers reported on children's book-sharing and oral storytelling experiences with mothers, fathers, and other people (siblings, grandparents, relatives, and family friends). Results showed that children's book-sharing experiences were strongly associated with their oral storytelling experiences, suggesting that individual children had uniformly high or low participation in these activities. Mothers, fathers, and other people (especially siblings) participated in these activities with children. Family socio-economic status (i.e. parent education and employment), parental ethnicity, and household composition related to children's experiences showing that learning experiences are embedded in ecological contexts. Future interventions should recognize the specific needs and advantages of families from diverse backgrounds, and involve multiple family members, including siblings.

Infants begin to produce abstract "math" words – such as numbers (e.g., "two"), spatial terms (e.g., "down"), and magnitude words (e.g., "more") – during their second postnatal year. Math words, as all words, are likely learned in the home setting during interactions with caregivers. However, everyday early exposure to math talk is understudied. What referents and social cues accompany caregivers' math-related speech to infants? We examined U.S. infants' (25 girls, 25 boys; ages 13 to 23 months; 60% white non-Latine) exposure to math words at home during everyday activities with their mothers. We documented three types of math words/phrases (i.e., number, spatial, and magnitude words), their referents (e.g., images in books), and the social cues that accompanied math talk (e.g., gestures). Math words appeared in 15% of mothers' utterances (13,000+ math utterances in aggregate), increased with child age, mostly specified spatial concepts (e.g., location and direction), and tended to refer to objects and actions in the environment that were relevant to the child, such as toys, books, and the child's body and behaviors. Social cues accompanied mothers' math talk about half the time. Notably, certain types of referents and social cues aligned with specific types of math talk (e.g., manual gestures such as points accompanied talk about spatial features such as shapes). In the everyday home environment, infants experience frequent and varied math words, across a variety of activities, in the presence of salient social and contextual cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods can powerfully affect conclusions about infant experiences and learning. Data from naturalistic observations may paint a very different picture of learning and development from those based on structured tasks, as illustrated in studies of infant walking, object permanence, intention understanding, and so forth. Using language as a model system, we compared the speech of 40 mothers to their 13-month-old infants during structured play and naturalistic home routines. The contrasting methods yielded unique portrayals of infant language experiences, while simultaneously underscoring cross-situational correspondence at an individual level. Infants experienced substantially more total words and different words per minute during structured play than they did during naturalistic routines. Language input during structured play was consistently dense from minute to minute, whereas language during naturalistic routines showed striking fluctuations interspersed with silence. Despite these differences, infants' language experiences during structured play mirrored the peak language interactions infants experienced during naturalistic routines, and correlations between language inputs in the two conditions were strong. The implications of developmental methods for documenting the nature of experiences and individual differences are discussed.

Caregivers' narrative elaborations have been consistently shown to relate to language, literacy, and cognitive skills in children. However, research with Latinos yields mixed findings in terms of how much caregivers elaborate and the benefits of elaborations for Latino children's development, especially within booksharing contexts. Moreover, little research has investigated whether and how children elaborate, and whether individual differences among children's narrative elaborations are related to changes in maternal elaborations over time. The current longitudinal study describes specific types of elaborations used by children and mothers and examines reciprocal relations between children's and mothers' elaborations over 1 year (at child age 3 and child age 4), in a sample of 45 Mexican immigrant mothers and their preschool-aged children. Maternal elaborations positively related to children's narrative development only when subtypes of elaborations were considered, but not when considering the frequency of elaborations more broadly. Moreover, children's elaborations at age 3 were differentially associated with specific maternal elaborations a year later. Findings underscore the need to examine narrative elaborations at a nuanced level in Latino populations.

The valid assessment of vocabulary development in dual‐language‐learning infants is critical to developmental science. We developed the Dual Language Learners English‐Spanish (DLL‐ES) Inventories to measure vocabularies of U.S. English‐Spanish DLLs. The inventories provide translation equivalents for all Spanish and English items on Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) short forms; extended inventories based on CDI long forms; and Spanish language‐variety options. Item‐Response Theory analyses applied to Wordbank and Web‐CDI data (n = 2603, 12–18 months; n = 6722, 16–36 months; half female; 1% Asian, 3% Black, 2% Hispanic, 30% White, 64% unknown) showed near‐perfect associations between DLL‐ES and CDI long‐form scores. Interviews with 10 Hispanic mothers of 18‐ to 24‐month‐olds (2 White, 1 Black, 7 multi‐racial; 6 female) provide a proof of concept for the value of the DLL‐ES for assessing the vocabularies of DLLs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]