Maternal and paternal behaviors during play interactions and children's early language achievements

Early interactions with parents are important contexts for early language development, yet relatively few studies directly compare maternal and paternal interaction behaviors within the same observational framework. The present study used the PICCOLO observational framework (Roggman et al., 2013), which includes Affection, Responsiveness, Encouragement, and Teaching, to examine how maternal and paternal behaviors during free play were associated with children's receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and observed expressive language production. Thirty children aged 16-30 months participated in two 15-minute home-based free-play sessions, one with the mother and one with the father. Children's language measures included mother-reported receptive and expressive vocabulary using the MB-CDI, as well as observational language indices derived from the play sessions, including Longest Utterance (LU), Mean Length of Utterance in words (MLUw), total word production, and number of child utterances. Results showed that Affection and Responsiveness were the most prevalent PICCOLO domains, whereas Teaching was observed less frequently. Mothers showed higher average levels of Affection and Responsiveness than fathers, although the overall pattern of behavioral domains was broadly similar across parents. Children's observed expressive language production did not significantly differ between mother-child and father-child interaction contexts. Overall parental behaviors were associated with children's expressive vocabulary and observed expressive language production, but were not consistently associated with receptive vocabulary. At the domain level, the Responsiveness-Encouragement composite showed the clearest association with observed expressive language production. Exploratory parent-specific analyses further suggested that paternal Encouragement and Responsiveness were associated with children's observed expressive language during father-child play. In contrast, maternal associations were narrower and centered mainly on Responsiveness. These findings suggest that both mother-child and father-child free-play interactions provide meaningful contexts for examining early parent-child interaction and children's active language use. The study contributes to research moving beyond mother-centered models of early language development by examining maternal and paternal behaviors within the same families and by incorporating observational measures of children's expressive language during play.