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  • Title: Fathers' but not Mothers' Repetition of Children's Utterances at Age Two is Associated with Child Vocabulary at Age Four.
    Author: Conica M, Nixon E, Quigley J.
    Journal: J Exp Child Psychol; 2020 Mar; 191():104738. PubMed ID: 31784030.
    Abstract:
    Repetition in child-directed speech has been shown to benefit child language development, yet fathers remain largely understudied in this context because research is primarily dominated by a focus on mothers. Accordingly, the current study, using a comparative approach, examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between parental repetition of children's utterances and child language ability. A period of 10 min of triadic structured play interaction for 21 families was analyzed using bivariate and partial correlations. No associations were found between parents' repetition and children's standardized measures of language ability; however, both mothers and fathers of 2-year-olds (M = 23.82 months, SD = 1.32; 11 girls) engaged in more repetition when their children used less diverse vocabularies in interaction, tentatively suggesting synergies between parental language input and concurrent child vocabulary. Furthermore, although maternal repetition at 2 years of age showed no significant relationship with children's language abilities at 4 years, fathers' repetition of 2-year-olds' utterances showed positive associations with children's vocabulary diversity at 4 years of age even after controlling for maternal repetition and children's language abilities at 2 years. Although these results are inconclusive, it is possible that paternal repetition of children's utterances may contribute to vocabulary development.
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