Child-directed speech: relation to socioeconomic

status, knowledge of child development and child

vocabulary skill
Citation
ROWE, MEREDITH L. 2008. “Child-Directed Speech: Relation to Socioeconomic Status,
Knowledge of Child Development and Child Vocabulary Skill.” Journal of Child Language 35 (01)
(January 3).

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doi:10.1017/S0305000907008343

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J. Child Lang. 35 (2008), 185–205. f 2008 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0305000907008343 Printed in the United Kingdom

Child-directed speech: relation to socioeconomic

status, knowledge of child development
and child vocabulary skill*
M E R E D I T H L. R O W E
University of Chicago

(Received 20 September 2006. Revised 2 April 2007)

ABSTRACT

This study sought to determine why American parents from different

socioeconomic backgrounds communicate in different ways with their
children. Forty-seven parent–child dyads were videotaped engaging
in naturalistic interactions in the home for ninety minutes at
child age 2; 6. Transcripts of these interactions provided measures
of child-directed speech. Children’s vocabulary comprehension skills
were measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at 2 ;6 and
one year later at 3 ; 6. Results indicate that : (1) child-directed speech
with toddlers aged 2; 6 predicts child vocabulary skill one year later,
controlling for earlier toddler vocabulary skill ; (2) child-directed
speech relates to socioeconomic status as measured by income
and education ; and (3) the relation between socioeconomic status and
child-directed speech is mediated by parental knowledge of child
development. Potential mechanisms through which parental knowledge
influences communicative behavior are discussed.

INTRODUCTION

Research documents a clear relation between socioeconomic status (SES),

particularly parent education and family income, and children’s vocabulary

[*] I thank Kristi Schonwald and Jason Voigt for administrative and technical support, and
Karyn Brasky, Laura Chang, Elaine Croft, Kristin Duboc, Jennifer Griffin, Sarah
Gripshover, Kelsey Harden, Lauren King, Carrie Meanwell, Erica Mellum, Molly
Nikolas, Jana Oberholtzer, Calla Rousch, Lilia Rissman, Becky Seibel, Meredith
Simone, Kevin Uttich and Julie Wallman for help in data collection and transcription.
I am thankful to the participating parents for their willingness to share their knowledge
and their children’s language development, and to Susan Goldin-Meadow, Barbara
Alexander Pan, Catherine Snow and two anonymous reviewers for commenting on
earlier drafts of this paper. The research was supported by grants from the NICHD :
F32 HD045099 to the author and P01 HD40605 to Susan Goldin-Meadow. Address for
correspondence : Meredith L. Rowe, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago,
5848 S. University Ave, Chicago, IL 60637. e-mail : rowemer@uchicago.edu
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development. More educated and advantaged parents have children

with greater vocabulary skills and faster vocabulary growth during early
childhood than less educated and advantaged parents (Arriaga, Fenson,
Cronan & Pethick, 1998 ; Hart & Risley, 1995 ; Hoff, Laursen & Tardif,
2002 ; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991; Lawrence & Shipley, 1996; Ninio, 1980).
Further research has shown that this relation between SES and child
vocabulary skill is due, in part, to the speech that parents offer children
during day-to-day interactions (Hart & Risley, 1995 ; Hoff, 2003 a;
Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Waterfall, Vevea & Hedges, in press). The most
compelling evidence of this sort comes from an analysis by Hoff (2003 a)
which shows that the mean length of utterance (MLU) and vocabulary that
mothers direct to children mediates the relation between SES and child
vocabulary development. High-SES mothers use longer utterances and
more different words when they talk to their children than low-SES
mothers and, in turn, their children have larger vocabularies (Hoff, 2003 a).
The focus of the present study is to take this work one step further and
address the question : WHY do more educated and advantaged parents talk
more and use more complex and varied language with their children than
less educated and advantaged parents ?
In reviewing the literature on child-directed speech and SES it is clear
that children from low-SES families experience very different communi-
cative environments, on average, than children from high-SES families.
Regarding the quantitative, or more data-providing aspects of speech
(Hoff, 2003 b; Hoff & Naigles, 2002), low-SES mothers are found to talk
less and use less varied vocabulary during interaction with their children
than high-SES mothers (Hart & Risley, 1995 ; Hoff, 2003 a; Hoff-Ginsberg,
1991 ; Lawrence & Shipley, 1996). These differences in words spoken
to children during short interactions add up to substantial cumulative
differences in the communicative experiences of children during early
childhood. Hart and Risley (1995) estimated that children from the high-
SES families they observed heard approximately 11 000 utterances in a day,
compared to 700 utterances for the children from low-SES families.
Differences are apparent in the social–pragmatic aspects of speech as well.
High-SES parents more often verbally encourage and provide affirmation
to their children than low-SES parents, and low-SES parents more often
verbally discourage and prohibit their children’s behavior than high-SES
parents (Hart & Risley, 1995). Furthermore, low-SES mothers more often
use speech to direct their children’s behavior and high-SES mothers more
often use speech to elicit conversation from their children (Farran &
Haskins, 1980 ; Heath, 1983).
There are several possible explanations for why parents from different
socioeconomic backgrounds communicate in different ways with their
children. One possibility is that parents from different SES groups have a
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different knowledge base or beliefs about child development which leads to

different ways of communicating with children. Research on the relation
between parental cognitions, beliefs and behaviors suggests that a parent’s
knowledge base, ‘ ideas ’ about child development (Goodnow & Collins,
1990), or ‘ beliefs’ (Sigel, 1985) contributes to parenting practices, as well
as to children’s developmental outcomes (McGillicuddy-DeLisi & Sigel,
1995). Recent work defines parental beliefs as knowledge based (Sigel &
McGillicuddy-DeLisi, 2002), thus the terms ‘ beliefs’ and ‘knowledge ’ are
used interchangeably in the current study to refer to parent cognitions
about children and parenting (Sigel & McGillicuddy-DeLisi, 2002). While
research supports relations between SES and parental beliefs and between
parental beliefs and parenting behaviors in general (Miller, 1988), few
studies have investigated whether aspects of child-directed speech differ
based on differences in parental beliefs about child development.
Cross-cultural research on language socialization supports a link between
parents’ beliefs about child development and their communication with
children. For example, LeVine and colleagues show striking differences in
the way middle-class mothers in the US communicate with their children
compared to Gusii mothers of Kenya, with the Gusii mothers rarely making
eye contact with their children and only responding to child vocalizations
if the children are in distress (Richman, Miller & LeVine, 1992). The
communicative actions (or non-actions) of the Gusii mothers follow from
their beliefs that babies cannot understand speech and thus it is senseless to
talk to them before they are older and can understand what is being said
(LeVine, 2004). Similar conclusions have been drawn based on research
with the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984), who
believe their children to be helpless and have no understanding, and thus
do not engage them in dyadic communicative interactions. Thus parents’
knowledge, or ‘ cultural belief systems ’ (Harkness & Super, 1996)
about child development relate to how they parent in general and, more
specifically, to their communicative interactions with children.
However, the above-mentioned findings are at the population level
and do not speak to the issue of SES differences in child-directed speech
within Western societies. Indeed, there are studies with American samples
showing a link between parental knowledge of child development and the
cognitive stimulation parents provide children as measured by the Home
Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory (Benasich &
Brooks-Gunn, 1996), yet it is not clear whether the same results hold for
aspects of child-directed speech. One study did find a relation between
mothers’ beliefs about the role the environment plays in developmental
outcomes and maternal questioning strategies with children aged 4; 6,
suggesting that maternal beliefs about child development relate to
specific aspects of communicative input (Donahue, Pearl & Herzog, 1997).
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However, this study was homogeneous in respect to SES. Qualitative

work by Heath (1983) also supports this relationship between parental
beliefs and communication within low-income samples in that differences
were observed in the communication African American parents offered their
children compared to Caucasian parents in the same region of the south-
eastern United States. Differences were based on parental beliefs about
children as communicative partners, with African American parents, who
rarely responded to child utterances, displaying beliefs that adults cannot
make babies talk and that children will ‘ come to know ’ on their own. The
Caucasian parents on the other hand, often labeled objects for their
children, and displayed beliefs which emphasize the important role of
parents in children’s development. In sum, empirical data on the relations
between parental knowledge about child development and parental com-
munication with infants and toddlers is scarce, and no research1 has sys-
tematically investigated whether or not this parental knowledge mediates
the well-documented relationships between SES and child-directed speech.
A second possible explanation for the relation between SES and child-
directed speech is that SES differences in child-directed speech may be
due to differences in the verbal abilities of the parents. For example, several
studies have shown that maternal language and literacy skills relate to
the vocabulary mothers use with children (Borduin & Henggeler, 1981 ;
Bornstein, Haynes & Painter, 1998; Rowe, Pan & Ayoub, 2005). Therefore,
parents who come from more educated and advantaged backgrounds
may have greater language skills and more verbal facilities to draw on
when interacting with their children than parents from less educated
and advantaged backgrounds, and these verbal abilities may be driving the
relation between SES and child-directed speech.
A third possibility is that parents from different SES groups have
different styles of language use regardless of addressee. Work by Hoff
(Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991 ; Hoff, 2003 a, b) has shown SES differences in the
talk that parents address to a RESEARCHER as well as talk addressed to
children. No hypothesis was offered regarding what may underlie these
general styles of language use, but we do know the mothers in the Hoff
study did not differ in their child-rearing beliefs or goals, as assessed by
interviews with researchers.
The present study addresses the three above hypotheses by examining
whether parental knowledge of child development and/or parental verbal
facility are factors that might mediate, or account for, the relation between
SES and child-directed speech. The third hypothesis, that parents from
different SES groups have different general styles of language use regardless

[1] Yet see Bornstein, Haynes & Painter (1998) for evidence of indirect effects.
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of addressee, is also tested, by examining relations between SES and

parent’s researcher-directed as well as child-directed speech.
The approach adopted here of identifying factors that mediate the
relation between SES and parental behavior is guided by an ecological
model of parenting (Bronfenbrenner, 1979 ; Luster & Okagaki, 1993) in which
multiple aspects of the parenting environment are examined to provide
information about the process by which parental characteristics mediate
between the larger social context and the experiences of children. Identifying
factors that mediate the relation between SES and child-directed speech
will provide useful information to early intervention programs targeting
parent–child interaction and child language development. For example,
socioeconomic status (i.e. education and income) is not very amenable to
intervention, nor is parental verbal facility. However, parental knowledge
of child development, if it proves an important mediator between SES and
child-directed speech, can be targeted by interventions designed to enhance
parent–child interaction and child language development.
First, a descriptive picture of the variation in child-directed speech within
a sample of American parents is presented. Second, the relationship
between child-directed speech and children’s vocabulary skill is documented.
Third, the relationships between SES and researcher-directed speech and
child-directed speech are examined. And, finally, parental knowledge of
child development and parental verbal facility are examined as mediators
of the relation between SES and child-directed speech. That is, whether
the relation between SES and child-directed speech is due to parental
knowledge of child development and/or parental verbal facility is
investigated. The specific research questions addressed are as follows :

(1) How much variation is there in the quantity and quality of child-
directed speech that parents offer toddlers ?
(2) Does child-directed speech with toddlers relate to children’s pre-
school vocabulary skill, controlling for toddler vocabulary skill?
(3) Does SES relate to child-directed speech and/or researcher-directed
speech?
(4) Does parental knowledge of child development and/or parental verbal
facility mediate the relation between SES and child-directed speech?

METHOD

Participants
Forty-seven toddlers and their primary caregivers participated in the study.
The parent–child dyads were drawn from a larger sample of 64 families
participating in a longitudinal study of children’s language development in
the greater Chicago area. Recruitment was based on direct mailings to
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families in targeted zip codes and an advertisement in a free monthly

parenting magazine. Parents who responded participated in a screening
questionnaire over the phone during which information was gathered on
race, ethnicity, income, education, language(s) spoken in the home, child
gender and birth order. Sixty-four English-speaking families were selected
to match as closely as possible the 2000 census data on family income
and ethnicity in the greater Chicago area.
The criteria for drawing the sample used in the present study were the
following. First, 8 of the 64 families were eliminated because in those
families both parents shared the primary caregiving role and thus both
parents interacted with the child in triadic interaction during data collec-
tion. These families were excluded, as the interactions were not considered
comparable to the other dyadic interactions. Second, of the remaining 56
primary caregivers, 47 agreed to participate in an additional interview at
child age 2 ; 6 where detailed parent measures were collected. The 9 primary
caregivers who opted not to participate did so for various reasons (e.g. 3 due
to the birth of another child, 2 claimed to be too busy, and 4 were not
interested or could not be reached). The final sample for the present study
includes 47 primary caregiver-child dyads. One of the primary caregivers is
a father and the rest are mothers. All parents speak English in the home as
the primary language.
The education level of the parents was collected categorically and
each category was assigned a value equivalent to years of education (less
than high school degree=10 years, high school degree=12 years, some
college or associates degree=14 years, college degree=16 years, more than
college=18 years). The primary caregivers averaged 16 years of education
(SD=2.09) with a range from 10–18 years. Education levels of primary
caregivers and their spouses were positively related (r=0.52, p<0.001),
thus only the primary caregiver’s education level was used in the following
analyses. Family income was also collected categorically based on pre-
determined ranges. For purposes of analyses, each category was assigned
a dollar value equivalent to the midpoint of the category range ($7,500 ;
$25,000 ; $42,500 ; $62,500 ; $87,500 ; $100,000). The average family income
was $62,889 (SD=$30,507) with a range spanning across all income
categories. Thus, while SES varied widely in this sample, the distributions
of both education and income were negatively skewed with more parents at
the higher end of the distribution. In fact, only one parent had not received
at least a high school degree and only three parents were in the lowest
income bracket. Furthermore, education and income were positively related
to one another (r=0.36, p<0.05).
Regarding ethnicity, 34 of the parents are Caucasian, 5 are African
American, 5 are Hispanic, and 3 are Asian. Nineteen of the children are girls,
and 28 are first-born. Parental age ranged from 19 to 45 years (M=33.5,
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SD=6.3), and children were, on average, 2; 6 during the parent–child video-

taped interactions (SD=0.30 months). When it was not possible to conduct
the parent interviews on the same day as the parent–child interactions, they
were scheduled for as close to that day as possible. On average, parent inter-
views occurred within 5 days of the parent–child interaction (SD=7.3 days).

Procedure and transcription

At child age 2; 6, parent–child dyads were visited in the home and were
videotaped engaging in their ordinary daily activities for 90 minutes.
Parents were told to interact as they normally would. The most common
types of activities included playing with toys, reading books and eating meals
or snacks. After the videotaped session was concluded, the experimenter
also gave the child the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III; Dunn
& Dunn, 1997), a measure of vocabulary comprehension. The PPVT was
administered to the children again, one year later, at 3;6.
All parent and child speech in the videotaped sessions was transcribed.
The unit of transcription was the utterance, defined as any sequence of
words that is preceded and followed by a pause, a change in conversational
turn or a change in intonational pattern. Transcription reliability was
established by having a second individual transcribe 20 percent of the
videotapes with a reliability criterion of 95 percent. That is, the two
transcribers had to be in agreement on 95 percent of the utterances.
Reliability was based on accuracy of both utterance boundaries and word
transcription. In the rare cases when there were disagreements on more
than 5 percent of the utterances, the remainder of utterances were examined
and a third judge was consulted to resolve all utterances under question.
When the transcriber and the reliability coder agreed on the accuracy of 95
percent of the utterances, the transcriber’s data was used. In transcription,
we were liberal in what counted as a word. All dictionary words, as well
as onomatopoeic sounds (e.g. woof-woof ) and evaluative sounds (e.g. woops,
uh-oh), were counted as words and transcribed. Transcripts were analyzed
to glean measures of child-directed speech.
In the separate parent interview, also at child age 2;6, parents were
administered measures of knowledge of child development and of verbal
facility described below. Parents were also audiotaped describing to the
researcher what a ‘ typical day ’ is like in their home and responding
to specific questions about parenting. These audiotapes were transcribed
following the guidelines for speech stated above.

Measures
Child-directed speech. Transcripts were coded and analyzed for speech
measures that provide information about both the data-providing and
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social–pragmatic aspects of child-directed speech. The number of words

(word tokens) parents produced during the 90-minute interaction served
as a measure of amount of speech. Vocabulary diversity was measured
using both the number of different words produced (word types) and the
diversity of a parent’s vocabulary (VOCD). The VOCD measure of lexical
diversity is useful in that it controls for the amount of talk produced, and
thus provides a less biased estimate of lexical diversity than word types or a
type–token ratio (see Malvern, Richards, Chipere & Duran (2004) for
details). Sentence complexity was measured by calculating the mean length
of the parents’ utterances in words. Furthermore, the proportion of parental
utterances coded as eliciting or directive were calculated as more social–
pragmatic measures of child-directed speech. Eliciting utterances were
utterances that elicited speech from the child including yes/no and
wh-questions. Directive utterances were utterances that were formed in the
imperative and used to direct the child’s behavior (e.g. ‘put the doll in the
house ’, ‘ don’t touch that ’).
Researcher-directed speech. All parents were interviewed by the author.
They were prompted by the following statement : ‘tell me about a typical
day in your child’s life, what he/she does, your routines and activities. You
can start in the morning and go through the day if you’d like. ’ If parents
responded minimally, they were encouraged by the researcher with
additional prompts such as ‘ and then what does he/she do ?’. Following the
parent narrative, parents responded to the following questions about
their parenting practices : (1) How often do you read to your child? (2) How
often does your child watch television or videos? (3) Is there anything in
particular you are trying to teach your child right now ? (4) Do you have
any specific goals or hopes for your child’s future ? And (5), What is your
favorite and least favorite thing about being a parent ? On average parents
were presented with a total of seven prompts or questions from the
researcher, although there was a range from five to eleven. The transcripts
of the narratives and question responses were analyzed for word tokens,
word types, VOCD and MLU. There was no relation between any of these
measures and the number of questions/prompts by the researcher during
the interview. The current study focuses on characteristics of the parental
speech during the interview, not the specific information portrayed by
parents.
Parental knowledge of child development. Parental knowledge of child
development was measured using the Knowledge of Infant Development
Inventory (KIDI ; MacPhee, 2002). Parents were asked to indicate whether
they agree/disagree with 39 statements about child development and 19
statements on the age that children reach certain developmental milestones.
The measure includes statements regarding child development during
infancy and toddlerhood which were selected to address principles of infant
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development, effective rearing techniques and health and safety issues.

A variety of sources were used to derive items including textbooks, infant
care and public health publications, developmental tests, and pediatricians’
reports about questions they frequently receive from parents. The state-
ments included in the KIDI focus on infants’ physical, social, linguistic,
perceptual and cognitive development, and include principles related to
early experience, social influences, atypical development and individual
differences (MacPhee, 2002). Some example statements include : (1) infants
understand only words they can say; (2) you must stay in the bathroom
when your child is in the tub ; (3) the way a child is brought up has little
effect on how smart he (she) will be; (4) a good way to teach your child not
to bite is to bite back ; and (5) infants of 12 months can remember toys they
have watched being hidden.
In scoring, the number of questions answered and accuracy are taken
into account to produce a total score. A higher score indicates more
knowledge of developmental processes and infant norms as based on
predetermined correct responses derived from the abovementioned
sources (e.g. textbooks). Parents varied widely in total KIDI scores from
48.3 to 93.1, with a mean score of 79.33 (SD=9.65). The mean for the
current sample on the 58 items is slightly lower than previous means
found with samples of middle-class mothers, and higher than samples of
Head Start mothers (MacPhee, 2002), as might be expected for a sample
diverse in SES. KIDI scores are correlated with family income (r=0.43,
p<0.01) and education (r=0.56, p<0.001) in this sample, as has been
found previously in other samples also diverse in SES (MacPhee, 2002).
These associations cannot be accounted for simply by the readability of
the KIDI, as readability indices put the KIDI at a 7th grade reading
level (MacPhee, 2002), an education level surpassed by all parents in this
study.
Parental verbal facility. In the same interview, parents were also
administered the vocabulary subscale of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence
Scale – Revised (WAIS-R ; Wechsler, 1981), a measure of verbal facility.
On this subscale parents are asked to provide definitions for 35 vocabulary
words and could receive a maximum raw score of 66 points. Raw scores
were then standardized based on published norms for adult age; these
standardized scores averaged 11.36 (SD=2.63).
Child vocabulary skill. Children were given the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III ; Dunn & Dunn, 1997) at child age 2 ;6 and
3; 6. Raw scores were converted to age-appropriate standardized scores
based on the published norms. This measure of receptive vocabulary was
chosen as the vocabulary outcome measure of choice because the PPVT is a
widely used measure of vocabulary skill and provides data independent
from the parent–child interaction.
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TABLE 1. Descriptive statistics for child-directed speech measures during

a 90-minute interaction at child age 2 ; 6 (n=47)

Child-directed speech M SD Min Max

Number of word tokens 3768 1936 696 7673

Number of word types 435 128 172 714
Mean length of utterance 4.16 0.63 2.55 5.41
(MLU in tokens)
Lexical diversity (VOCD) 75.54 11.67 45.47 99.00
Proportion directive utterances 0.12 0.06 0.05 0.26
Proportion eliciting utterances 0.31 0.07 0.16 0.50

TABLE 2. Simple estimated correlation coefficients (Pearson’s r) among

child-directed speech measures (n=47)

Word Word Proportion

tokens types MLU VOCD directive

Word tokens
Word types 0.92***
MLU 0.39** 0.42**
VOCD 0.34* 0.47*** 0.48***
Proportion directive x0.42** x0.49*** x0.24y x0.31*
Proportion eliciting 0.06 0.11 0.07 x0.03 x0.29*

y p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001.

RESULTS

Variation in quantity and quality of child-directed speech

The first goal of the study is to examine the amount of variation among
parents in the child-directed speech they offer their toddlers. Descriptive
statistics for child-directed speech measures are presented in Table 1.
Parents varied widely in the amount and diversity of talk they directed to
their children at 2; 6. For example, some parents produced over 10 times as
many words or 5 times as many different vocabulary words during a
90-minute interaction with their children than other parents. Furthermore,
directive utterances in the imperative made up 12 percent of utterances, on
average, while eliciting utterances made up 31 percent of utterances,
on average. Table 2 presents associations among child-directed speech
measures. Not surprisingly, parents who talked more (word tokens) also
produced more word types, had higher levels of lexical diversity (VOCD)
and produced longer utterances (MLU) with their toddlers.
There were no relationships between quantity, diversity or complexity of
parent talk and the proportion of utterances that were eliciting. However,
there were negative relationships between the proportion of utterances that
were used in the imperative to direct the child’s behavior and the quantity
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TABLE 3. Regression models predicting child vocabulary comprehension at 3; 6,

based on vocabulary comprehension and child-directed speech at 2;6 (n=45)

Vocabulary comprehension (PPVT) B (se)

Predictors at 2 ;6 Model 1 Model 2

Intercept 50.33*** 64.12***

(10.91) (11.26)
Vocabulary comprehension (PPVT) 0.61*** 0.46***
(0.11) (0.12)
Child-directed speech composite 6.09**
(2.19)
R-squared stat (%) 41.3 50.8

* p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001.

and diversity of parent talk. Specifically, parents who used a larger

proportion of their utterances to direct their child’s behavior produced fewer
word tokens, and produced less diverse vocabulary (types and VOCD) than
parents who used fewer of their utterances to direct their child’s behavior.
To limit the overall number of child-directed speech measures, the
five related measures (e.g. tokens, types, MLU, VOCD and proportion
directive) were combined into a composite measure of child-directed speech
using principal components analyses. Associations among these five child-
directed speech measures ranged from r=0.24 to r=0.92 (see Table 2). The
first principal component weighted tokens, types, MLU and VOCD
positively and the proportion of directive utterances negatively. The
weights for tokens and types were slightly larger than for MLU, VOCD and
proportion directive, which were of relatively equal value. This principal
component accounted for approximately 57 percent of the original variance.
The mean score of the composite is 0 (SD=1.0). For a parent to score high
on the child-directed speech composite she or he would have to produce
many word tokens and types, produce lexically diverse speech, produce long
utterances and produce a small proportion of utterances that are directive.

Relation between child-directed speech and subsequent child vocabulary skill

The second goal of the study is to document a relation between child-
directed-speech and child vocabulary skill. Children varied widely in their
vocabulary comprehension skills at 3 ; 6. Normed PPVT scores ranged from
63 to 137 with an average of 106.7 (SD=17.5), slightly above the expected
average of 100 for the general population. Two children did not complete
the PPVT at 3 ; 6, reducing the sample size to 45 for this analysis. PPVT
scores in this sample were significantly related to parent education (r=0.51,
p<0.001) and family income (r=0.33, p<0.05). Table 3 presents regression
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models showing the relation between child-directed speech to toddlers

and children’s preschool vocabulary skill. Model 1 (Table 3) shows that,
as expected, children’s vocabulary comprehension (PPVT) at 2 ;6 explains
a large amount of the variance (41 percent) in their vocabulary compre-
hension (PPVT) at 3 ; 6. Model 2 shows that controlling for child vocabulary
comprehension at 2 ; 6, child-directed speech at 2;6 is also a significant
predictor of preschool vocabulary skill, explaining approximately an
additional 10 percent of the variance. Thus, the quantity and quality of
speech that parents use with toddlers during everyday interactions does
relate to children’s preschool vocabulary size, even after taking children’s
vocabulary size during toddlerhood into account. Neither education nor
income was a significant predictor of PPVT at 3; 6 after controlling for
PPVT and child-directed speech at 2; 6.
So far, the results concur with previous findings that child-directed
speech relates to children’s vocabulary skill. The third goal of the study is to
explore the relation between SES and parent’s researcher-directed and
child-directed speech.

Relation of SES to researcher-directed and child-directed speech

Parents varied widely in the quantity and diversity of talk they addressed to
the researcher. Results show a significant association between the number of
word types parents produced in the two situations (r=0.33, p<0.05), but
there was no relation between the number of words produced (tokens), the
lexical diversity of the talk (VOCD) or the length of the utterances (MLU)
during child-directed and researcher-directed speech. Furthermore, there
were no significant relationships between SES measures (education and
income) and the speech that parents directed to the researcher (tokens,
types, VOCD or MLU), indicated by either simple correlations or partial
correlations controlling for the number of prompts and questions posed by
the researcher.
There are significant positive relations between the child-directed speech
composite and parent education (r=0.49, p<0.001) and between the child-
directed speech composite and family income (r=0.44, p<0.001). There
are no relations between education or income and the proportion of eliciting
utterances produced by parents. In sum, parents from more educated
and advantaged backgrounds scored higher on the child-directed speech
composite and thus talked more, used a more diverse lexicon, produced
longer utterances and produced a smaller proportion of utterances that are
directive with their toddlers at 2 ; 6 than parents from less educated and
advantaged backgrounds. As there was no relation between SES and
the proportion of eliciting utterances, that measure is not included in
subsequent analyses. The final set of analyses explore whether parental
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knowledge of child development and/or verbal facility mediates this relation

between SES and child-directed speech.

Knowledge of child development and/or verbal facility as mediating factors

To explore whether parental knowledge of child development and/or
verbal facility mediates the relation between SES and child-directed speech,
the guidelines for establishing mediation offered by Baron and Kenny
(1986) were followed. In order for a variable to mediate a relation, several
conditions must be met : (1) the predictor variable(s) (SES) must relate to
the outcome variable (child-directed speech) ; (2) the predictor variable(s)
(SES) must relate to the potential mediator variable (KIDI/WAIS) ; (3)
the mediator variable (KIDI/WAIS) must relate to the outcome variable
(child-directed speech) ; and (4) the significant relation between the pre-
dictor variable(s) (SES) and the outcome variable (child-directed speech)
must reduce to non-significance upon inclusion of the significant mediator
variable (KIDI/WAIS) in the model. Here, these conditions are tested
using correlation and regression analyses.
The first condition, that is, that SES relates to child-directed speech, was
met, as noted above. To test the second condition, the associations between
SES and knowledge of child development (KIDI) and verbal facility
(WAIS) were examined. Parental education was positively related to KIDI
(r=0.56, p<0.001) and WAIS (r=0.50, p<0.001) scores, as was family
income (KIDI : r=0.43, p<0.01 ; WAIS : r=0.37, p<0.01). Thus, more
educated and advantaged parents know more about child development, as
measured by the KIDI, and have more verbal facility than less educated
and advantaged parents. To satisfy the third condition, the relations
between the outcome variable, child-directed speech, and the potential
mediating variables, KIDI and WAIS, were examined. These relations
are positive and significant (KIDI : r=0.54, p<0.001 ; WAIS : r=0.41, p<
0.01); thus parents who know more about child development and parents
who have more verbal facility talk more, use more diverse vocabulary, use
longer utterances and produce fewer utterances that direct their child’s
behavior than parents who know less about child development and parents
with less verbal facility.
To determine whether the final condition is met, a series of regression
models predicting the child-directed speech composite were fit and are
displayed in Table 4. Model 1 shows the relation between SES and child-
directed speech. In this model, education and income are significant
positive predictors, explaining a combined 31.5 percent of the variance
in child-directed speech. Parental knowledge of child development was
examined first as a mediating factor between SES and child-directed speech.
Model 2 (Table 4) includes parental knowledge of child development
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TABLE 4. A series of regression models testing whether parental knowledge of

child development (KIDI) and/or parental verbal facility (WAIS) mediates the
relation between SES and child-directed speech (n=47)

Child-directed speech composite B (se)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Intercept x3.58** x4.84*** x3.67*** x5.23***

(0.99) (1.13) (0.99) (1.05)
Education 0.18** 0.11 0.15* 0.08
(0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07)
Income 0.01* 0.007 0.009y 0.006
(0.004) (0.004) (0.005) (0.004)
Knowledge of child development 0.03* 0.03*
(KIDI) (0.02) (0.01)
Verbal facility (WAIS-R) 0.06
(0.06)
Child word types 0.004**
(0.001)
R-squared stat (%) 31.5 37.7 33.2 48.8

y p<0.10; * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001.

(KIDI) as a predictor, controlling for education and income. Here, the

previously significant relations between SES (education and income) and
child-directed speech are no longer significant when KIDI is included
in the model, and KIDI is a significant positive predictor ( p<0.05) of
child-directed speech explaining an additional 6 percent of the variance.
Thus, the final condition of mediation is met, supporting the hypothesis
that parental knowledge of child development mediates the relation between
SES and child-directed speech.
Next, parental verbal facility was examined as a mediating factor.
Model 3 (Table 4) includes parental verbal facility (WAIS) as a predictor of
child-directed speech, controlling for education and income. Here, while
the parameter estimates for the effects of education and income reduce
slightly from Model 1, education remains a significant predictor ( p<0.05)
and income remains marginally significant ( p<0.10). Furthermore, parental
verbal facility (WAIS) does not significantly relate to child-directed speech
when SES is controlled. Thus, verbal facility does not mediate the relation
between SES and child-directed speech.
As a final step, other important control variables were added to the model
containing education, income and knowledge of child development (Model
2). First, the children’s vocabulary production (word types) during the
90-minute interaction at 2 ; 6 was included as a predictor, as the child’s
vocabulary skill may influence the parent’s child-directed speech. Model 4
(Table 4) shows that controlling for child vocabulary production ( p<0.01)
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during the interaction as well as parental education and income, parental

knowledge of child development remains a significant predictor ( p<0.05) of
child-directed speech. Furthermore, child vocabulary production explains
an additional 11 percent of the variance in child-directed speech. Other
background characteristics, including parental age, parental ethnicity, child
gender and child birth order, were also examined to determine if they were
significant predictors of child-directed speech if added to Model 4 and none
proved significant at the p<0.05 level.

DISCUSSION

Despite broad consensus of the relation between SES (e.g. education and
income) and child-directed speech within Western societies, it is surprising
that we do not have a clear understanding of what is driving this relation-
ship. The present study provides some insight into why parents from
different SES groups communicate in different ways with their children.
Most notable is the current finding that parental knowledge of child
development mediates the relationship between SES and child-directed
speech, suggesting that parents from different SES groups have different
beliefs about child development which influence how they communicate
with their children on a day-to-day basis. This finding and its implications
are discussed in more detail, after reviewing other relevant results
regarding relations between child-directed speech, SES and child vocabulary
skill.
In this study it was essential to first replicate previous findings
documenting relations between child-directed speech and child vocabulary
skill, and between SES and child-directed speech, before answering the
crucial question concerning why parents from different SES backgrounds
communicate differently with their children. Consistent with previous
work, the current findings show that more talk, more diverse and complex
talk, and limited use of directive utterances by parents is associated with
larger vocabulary size in children (Arriaga et al., 1998 ; Hart & Risley, 1995 ;
Hoff, 2003 a; Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer & Lyons, 1991 ; Pan,
Rowe, Singer & Snow, 2005). Taken together the child-directed speech
composite in this study explained approximately ten additional percentage
points of the variance in child vocabulary comprehension above and beyond
children’s earlier vocabulary abilities. The magnitude of the effect of child-
directed speech is most likely an underestimate, as controlling for children’s
earlier vocabulary comprehension already controls for some of the prior
effects of child-directed speech. These results complement those of
Hoff (2003 a) by showing that child-directed speech relates to vocabulary
comprehension as well as production and add further support to the
importance of the early communicative environment in language learning.
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The findings from the present study also replicate previous findings of
a relation between SES and child-directed speech (Hart & Risley, 1995 ;
Hoff, 2003 a; Huttenlocher et al., in press; Rowe et al., 2005). In the
current study both parent education and family income relate to the
communication that parents offer children on a day-to-day basis. Specifically,
more educated and advantaged parents talk more to their children, use more
diverse vocabulary and longer utterances, and produce a smaller proportion
of utterances that direct their child’s behavior than less educated and
advantaged parents. Surprisingly, there was no positive relationship in this
study between SES and the proportion of parental utterances that were
conversation eliciting, as has been found previously (Farran & Haskins,
1980 ; Heath, 1983). However, the current results concur with some
previous research, as Hoff-Ginsberg (1991) also found SES differences in
the number of directives mothers used with children, but not in the
number of conversation-eliciting utterances produced. Perhaps the amount
of parental questioning is not a sensitive enough measure to capture
SES differences, and specific characteristics of the questions should be
considered. For example, high-SES parents may ask more test questions
(Heath, 1983), or questions testing their children’s knowledge as are
common in a school environment, whereas low-SES parents may ask more
yes/no questions or questions that require a less extensive response.
With the above relationships documented, the primary goal of the present
study was to identify factors that mediate the relation between SES and
child-directed speech to help understand why it is that parents from
different socioeconomic backgrounds communicate in different ways
with their children. Three potential explanations were examined and are
discussed here in turn.
The first potential explanation was that parents from different SES
groups have different styles of language use in general regardless of
addressee. This explanation was not supported, as we did not find a relation
between SES and the talk that parents direct to a researcher, despite finding
that SES relates to child-directed speech. This lack of a relationship was
surprising as it failed to replicate previous research by Hoff-Ginsberg
(1991), showing a relation between SES and researcher-directed speech.
One possibility for the different findings in the two studies is that the parent
interview questions posed in the current study were less open-ended than
those posed by Hoff-Ginsberg (1991), and resulted in shorter answers and
less variation in researcher-directed speech measures. However, in the
current study parents varied widely in their researcher-directed speech,
with some parents using over 2500 words and 500 word types, and some
using fewer than 400 words and 200 word types. Another difference
between the two studies is that the researcher-directed speech in the present
study consisted of both parental narratives about a typical day and parental
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responses to the researcher’s questions. Perhaps the responses to questions

are more influenced by SES, as shown in the Hoff-Ginsberg study (1991),
than are parental narratives. Overall, with only two studies on the topic
to date, and with those two studies showing conflicting findings, we need
additional findings before making any definitive conclusions about the
SES–researcher-directed speech relation. However, if the current lack of a
relationship is replicated in future work it might suggest that parents do
indeed have different styles of communicating with their children than
with other adults, and these styles of communicating with children may be
guided by their knowledge of child development, whereas their styles of
communicating with adults may be rooted in other factors or experiences.
The remaining potential explanations were that parental verbal facility
and/or parental knowledge of child development might mediate the relation
between SES and child-directed speech. Our analyses determined that
parental verbal facility did not serve as a mediator, despite previous findings
showing a relation between parents’ verbal abilities and child-directed
speech (Bornstein et al., 1998 ; Rowe et al., 2005). However, we did find that
parental knowledge of child development mediated the relation between
SES and child-directed speech. That is, differences in child-directed speech
based on parental education level and income were due to differences in
parental knowledge of child development.
The positive relationship between parental income and education levels
and knowledge of child development has been found in previous studies
using the KIDI (MacPhee, 2002), as well as a variety of other parental
belief measures (see Miller (1988) for a review). A high score on the KIDI
indicates more knowledge about developmental processes and norms
during infancy and toddlerhood, and indicates that the parents’ beliefs
about principles related to early experience, social influences and individual
differences are more in line with those that have been theorized to benefit
children’s development. These beliefs are likely due to increased education,
a measure of SES in the current study. Indeed research confirms that
middle-class parents often gain information about parenting from
educational resources such as courses in child development, books, magazines
and pediatricians, whereas low-SES parents rely more on friends, relatives
and more informal experiences for parenting advice (Clarke-Stewart, 1978).
Since the KIDI itself is based on information from educational resources
and experts it is not surprising that it is sensitive to these SES differences.
The relationship found here between parental beliefs about child devel-
opment and aspects of parental communication with toddlers adds to the
previous research on relations between parental beliefs and practices.
Specifically, the results indicate that parents who hold beliefs about
child development that are more in line with information offered by experts,
pediatricians and textbooks, talk more, use more diverse vocabulary and
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longer utterances, and produce a smaller proportion of directive utterances

during their everyday interactions with their toddlers, than parents who do
not hold these beliefs. Importantly, these are aspects of child-directed
speech found conducive to language learning. These findings are consistent
with previous findings that parents who understand their children’s abilities
are best able to structure their child’s environment to the cognitive level of
the child (Miller & Davis, 1992), thus providing challenging communicative
experiences within the child’s zone of proximal development, experiences
likely to promote optimal development (Vygotsky, 1978).
Following this reasoning, the current results suggest that parents with
more knowledge of child development are more ‘in tune ’ with their chil-
dren’s language abilities and adjust their child-directed speech accordingly.
Research shows that when children are very young mothers accept burps
and smiles as conversational turns worthy of response, yet as children grow
and increase in language ability more sophisticated vocalizations are
required. This is an indication that mothers fine-tune their language to the
language level of their children (Snow, 1977). Moreover, the ability of
parents to adjust their child-directed speech to the level of the child is
supported by findings showing that parents who believe their children
understand more, use more varied vocabulary with their children (Rowe,
2000), and by findings from recent longitudinal studies showing that
parents use more complex speech and more diverse vocabularies as children
get older and increase in language ability (Huttenlocher et al., in press; Pan
et al., 2005). Thus, the results from the current study indicate that parental
beliefs about child development relates to child-directed speech in that
it helps parents gauge their child’s language abilities and fine-tune their
language to the level of the child.
If this explanation of the relation between beliefs and practices is correct,
than it would be interesting to know whether we would gain more by
measuring parental knowledge of language development in particular, rather
than child development in general. The current study and the study by
Donahue and colleagues (1997) both show relationships between parental
beliefs about child development in general and child-directed speech.
Donahue and colleagues did not ask parents about language development,
but found that mothers who hold stronger beliefs about the power of the
environment to affect positive developmental outcomes posed more ques-
tions with their four-year-old children during a referential communication
task, even when child language skills were controlled. In the current
study, efforts to separate parental responses to questions on the KIDI about
language development versus development in general were inconclusive.
Specifically, there was too little variation on the few items focused on
language to see any relation with child-directed speech. While knowledge of
child development in general and knowledge of language development in
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particular are likely related, more information on parents’ beliefs about

language development may provide a more specific means of interpretation
for the relation between parental beliefs and child-directed speech.
Johnston & Wong (2002) developed a questionnaire on beliefs and practices
concerning talk to children, yet there is no available validity or psycho-
metric data on the measure. A valid and reliable instrument on parental
beliefs about child language development and communication with children
would be a very useful tool for the fields of child language development,
parenting and early intervention.
This study was limited in several important ways. First, the sample was
not a nationally representative sample and thus the findings are not
generalizable to all American families. Furthermore, as discussed above, the
KIDI measures the extent to which beliefs about child development concur
with those offered by experts and textbooks in the field and thus does not
value non-mainstream beliefs which may derive from various cultural or
ethnic differences. Despite these limitations, it is clear that parental
knowledge of child development is an important factor to consider for
interventions targeting the early communicative environments of children.
The results of the present study suggest that interventions focused on
parental knowledge of child development have the potential to influence
how parents communicate with children, and in turn children’s subsequent
language development, independent of the SES of the parents. This is an
exciting possibility, as knowledge of child development is potentially more
amenable to intervention than SES. Of course, interventions which provide
advice to parents should be mindful of the goals of the parents, the sources
of information parents are exposed to and to differences in ethnic and
cultural backgrounds (Goodnow, 2002). Nevertheless, future interventions
of this sort will provide important information about causal relationships,
helping us to understand the specific mechanisms underlying relations
between parental beliefs, parent–child communicative interaction and child
language development.

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