title: Language experiences and vocabulary development in Dominican and Mexican infants across the first 2 years.
abstract: We longitudinally investigated parental language context and infants' language experiences in relation to Dominican American and Mexican American infants' vocabularies. Mothers provided information on parental language context, comprising measures of parents' language background (i.e., childhood language) and current language use during interviews at infants' birth. Infants' language experiences were measured at ages 14 months and 2 years through mothers' reports of mothers' and fathers' engagement in English and Spanish literacy activities with infants and mothers' English and Spanish utterances during videotaped mother-infant interactions. Infants' vocabulary development at 14 months and 2 years was examined using standardized vocabulary checklists in English and Spanish. Both parental language context and infants' language experiences predicted infants' vocabularies in each language at both ages. Furthermore, language experiences mediated associations between parental language context and infants' vocabularies. However, the specific mediation mechanisms varied by language.
authors.affiliation: Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education, Department of Applied Psychology, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University, USA. lulusong@nyu.edu
authors.forename: Lulu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Catherine S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Tamis-Lemonda
authors.forename: Hirokazu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yoshikawa
authors.forename: Ronit
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kahana-Kalman
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002391:Catchment Area, Health; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004293:Dominican Republic; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008800:Mexico; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014741:Video Recording; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult