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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 8, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Mothers' Work Status and 17-month-olds' Productive Vocabulary.

Catherine E Laing¹, Elika Bergelson¹

¹Cardiff University and Duke University.

Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies

|April 10, 2019

Summary

Mothers working part-time or full-time impacts infant language. A combination of maternal and other caretaker involvement benefits infant vocabulary development, especially for early lexical growth.

Keywords:

language development maternal work status mother-child relations

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Published on: June 20, 2020

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Child Language Acquisition
Early Childhood Education

Background:

Existing research on maternal employment and infant language development presents mixed findings.
Limited studies explore the impact of varied work schedules and specific care arrangements on early vocabulary acquisition.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the relationship between maternal work status (full-time, part-time, stay-at-home) and infant productive vocabulary at 17 months.
To analyze the influence of different care combinations (maternal, other caretakers) on early lexical development.

Main Methods:

Utilized naturalistic data from 44 infants at 6 and 18 months of age.
Assessed productive vocabulary in relation to maternal work status and care arrangements.

Main Results:

Infants receiving a combination of care from mothers and other caretakers exhibited larger productive vocabularies.
This effect was observed in comparison to infants solely cared for by mothers full-time or solely by other caretakers.

Conclusions:

A mixed-care approach, involving both maternal and other caretakers, may be particularly advantageous for fostering early lexical development in infants.
Findings suggest that the quality and combination of care, not just maternal work status, are crucial for language acquisition.