Dr. Margaret Fields‐Olivieri, director of the Toddler Affect, Language & Communication (TALK) Lab, has a new article in the journal Infancy. Her co-authors are clinical psychology graduate students Kristin Jennings, Caitlin Stone, and Crystal Thinzar.
Toddlers get upset a lot, but scientists know little about how these moments affect the way parents and toddlers talk to each other. To find out, Dr. Fields-Olivieri and her research team listened to all-day audio recordings from the homes of 25 one-year-olds, focusing on times when the toddlers were upset.
About a third of the time, upset toddlers tried to talk or babble while crying. Older toddlers with stronger language skills did this more often. Parents responded most to calm talking. Surprisingly, they responded the least to crying mixed with talking. When parents did respond to an upset toddler, the toddler often shifted toward using words or calmed down. These findings suggest that emotions play an important part in how young children learn to talk.
Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.70105
