The effects of maternal input on language in the absence of genetic confounds: Vocabulary development in internationally adopted children.

Previous studies have found correlations between parent input and child language outcomes, providing prima facie evidence for a causal relation. However, this could also reflect the effects of shared genes. The present study removed this genetic confound by measuring English vocabulary growth in 29 preschool-aged children (21 girls) aged 31-73 months and 17 infants (all girls) aged 15-32 months adopted from China and Eastern Europe and comparing it to speech produced by their adoptive mothers.