There is robust evidence that infants' gestures and vocalisations and caregivers' contingent responses predict later child vocabulary. Recent studies suggest that dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' responses are more robust predictors of children's vocabularies than these behaviors separately. Previous studies have not yet systematically compared different types of dyadic combinations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLimited studies have examined demographic differences in children's vocabulary in longitudinal samples, while there are questions regarding the duration, direction, and magnitude of these effects across development. In this longitudinal study, we included over 400 Dutch children. Caregivers filled out N-CDIs when children were 9-11 months (measuring word comprehension, word production, and gestures) and around 2-5 years of age (measuring word production).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCaregivers use a range of verbal and nonverbal behaviours when responding to their infants. Previous studies have typically focused on the role of the caregiver in providing verbal responses, while communication is inherently multimodal (involving audio and visual information) and bidirectional (exchange of information between infant and caregiver). In this paper, we present a comprehensive study of caregivers' verbal, nonverbal, and multimodal responses to 10-month-old infants' vocalisations and gestures during free play.
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