The bidirectional association between maternal speech and child characteristics

Abstract

Our aim was to assess whether infants influence the quantity and quality of their mothers’ speech to them and, in turn, whether this maternal speech influences children's later language. As 189 mothers interacted with each of their twins at age 0;5, we calculated the number of utterances, the proportion of sensitive utterances, and the proportion of self-repeated utterances they produced. We later assessed the twins’ language comprehension and production when they were 1;6, 2;6, and 5;2. Quantity of maternal speech predicted child language at 5;2, whereas sensitivity predicted child language at 2;6 and 5;2 and partial self-repetition predicted child language at 1;6. Conversely, sensitivity and partial self-repetition in maternal speech at 0;5 were associated with genetic factors from the child, indicating that infant characteristics influence the quality of maternal speech. Overall, our findings stress the importance of considering both directions in the association between maternal speech and child characteristics.

Variability in Asian parents’ English and mathematics skills: A family-based study

“…One study followed a large cohort of twins from infancy, along with their mothers, longitudinally, and found a bidirectional association between maternal speech and child characteristics, including language. Specifically, they demonstrated that infants influenced how their mothers spoke to them, which in turn affected the number of words the children could produce and comprehend later (Mimeau et al, 2019). Comparable results were also found in older children over 2 years old.…”

“…However, this perspective has not yet been applied to matters of adults' academic performance. In contrast, for parental language performance, studies have demonstrated that children's characteristics tend to influence maternal speech (Huttenlocher et al, 2010;Schick et al, 2017;Mimeau et al, 2019). One study followed a large cohort of twins from infancy, along with their mothers, longitudinally, and found a bidirectional association between maternal speech and child characteristics, including language.…”

“…Perhaps the most interesting finding from this study was that children's academic performances significantly explained that of parents beyond other family related factors and parents' own educational achievement in Hong Kong and in Cebu. Despite the fact that there are some studies suggesting a bidirectional relationship between children and parents in speech or vocabulary diversity (Huttenlocher et al, 2010;Schick et al, 2017;Mimeau et al, 2019), traditional understanding of parent and child interactions in academic performance mainly focuses on how parents influence their children's academic achievement (e.g., Downey, 1995;Braham and Libertus, 2017). There are also some findings suggesting that children's academic performance affects parental investment, such as homework assistance (Silinskas et al, 2013;Quadlin, 2015).…”

Parent–toddler play talk: Toddler speech is differentially associated with paternal and maternal speech in interaction

“…A large literature has revealed the extent to which parents adjust and adapt the speech they address to children, although evidence has primarily been collected with mothers (e.g. Mimeau et al, 2020). Prosodic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and other modifications are systematically applied to adult speech (Cychosz et al, 2021;Moscoso del Prado et al, 2020;Roy et al, 2009;Snow, 1995) according to a range of child characteristics, primarily language ability (Dailey & Bergelson, 2023;Pancsofar, 2020) and age (Rowe & Snow, 2020).…”