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Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
05:35

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
PubMed

Literature examining the effects of mothers' work status on infant language development is mixed, with little focus on varying work-schedules and early vocabulary. We use naturalistic data to analyze the productive vocabulary of 44 17-month-olds in relation to mothers' work status (Full-time, Part-time, Stay-at-home) at 6 and 18 months. Infants who experienced a combination of care from mothers and other caretakers had larger productive vocabularies than infants in solely full-time maternal or solely other-caretaker care. Our results draw from naturalistic data to suggest that this care combination may be particularly beneficial for early lexical development.

Keywords:
language developmentmaternal work statusmother-child relations

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