Bursty, Irregular Speech Input to Children Predicts Vocabulary Size.

ABSTRACT: Children learn language by listening to speech from caregivers around them. However, the type and quantity of speech input that children are exposed to change throughout early childhood in ways that are poorly understood due to the small samples (few participants, limited hours of observation) typically available in developmental psychology. Here we used child-centered audio recorders to unobtrusively measure speech input in the home to 292 children (aged 2-7 years), acquiring English in the United States, over 555 distinct days (approximately 8600 total hours of observation, or 29.62 h/child). These large timescales allowed us to compare how different dimensions of child-directed speech input (quantity, burstiness) varied throughout early childhood. We then evaluated the relationship betw

SUBMITTER: Cychosz M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12313352 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature