Teaching a novel word: Parenting styles and toddlers' word learning

We examined the styles that parents adopted while teaching a novel word to their toddlers and whether those styles related to children's word learning and engagement during the task. Participants were 36 parents and their toddlers (M_age = 20 months). Parents were videotaped while teaching their children a name for a novel object. Parental utterances were transcribed verbatim and coded for cognitive and autonomy support. Children's utterances were coded for elicited and spontaneous contributions. Children's ability to recognize and process the novel word was assessed using the Looking-While-Listening task. Two parental cognitive support styles were identified via cluster analysis: "Cognitive Scaffolders," who combined a diversity of teaching moves, and "Labelers," who focused on labeling the novel object for the children. Similarly, two parental autonomy support styles were identified: "Followers," who focused on following the children's lead and providing positive feedback, and "Non-followers," who used diverse communicative ways to engage the children. Compared with parents who were Labelers, parents who were Cognitive Scaffolders were not more or less likely to be Followers. Children of Cognitive Scaffolders were better at recognizing the novel word, and children of Followers were more engaged (provided more elicited and spontaneous contributions) in the word-teaching task. Children's ability to recognize the novel word was not related to their engagement. Findings highlight the unique contributions of parental cognitive and autonomy support to children's word learning and engagement.