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. 2025 Jan-Feb;30(1):e12626.
doi: 10.1111/infa.12626. Epub 2024 Sep 25.

The role of dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' verbal and multimodal responses in predicting vocabulary outcomes

Anika van der Klis  1 , Caroline Junge  2 , Frans Adriaans  1 , René Kager  1
Affiliations

The role of dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' verbal and multimodal responses in predicting vocabulary outcomes

Anika van der Klis et al. Infancy. 2025 Jan-Feb.

Abstract

There is robust evidence that infants' gestures and vocalisations and caregivers' contingent responses predict later child vocabulary. Recent studies suggest that dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' responses are more robust predictors of children's vocabularies than these behaviors separately. Previous studies have not yet systematically compared different types of dyadic combinations. This study aimed to compare the predictive value of (a) frequencies of infants' behaviors (vocalisations, points, and shows + gives) regardless of caregivers' responses, (b) frequencies of infants' behaviors that elicited verbal responses, (c) frequencies of infants' behaviors that elicited multimodal responses, and (d) frequencies of infants' behaviors that did not elicit any responses from caregivers. We examined 114 caregiver-infant dyads at 9-11 months and children's concurrent and longitudinal vocabulary outcomes at 2-4 years. We found that infants' points elicited a large proportion of verbal responses from caregivers which were related to children's later receptive vocabularies. We also found that only shows + gives that elicited caregivers' responses related to infants' concurrent gesture repertoires. In contrast, infants' behaviors that did not elicit responses negatively related to child vocabulary. The results highlight the importance of examining dyadic combinations of infants' behaviors and caregivers' responses during interactions when examining relations to children's vocabulary development.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest with regard to the funding source for this study.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Four subsets of infant and dyadic behaviors used to predict children's vocabulary outcomes.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The relation between the frequency of infants' points and children's later receptive vocabularies.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The relation between the frequency of infants' points that elicited verbal responses and children's later receptive vocabularies.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
The relation between the frequency of infants' shows + gives and their concurrent gesture repertoires.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
The relation between the frequency of infants' shows + gives that elicited multimodal responses and their concurrent gesture repertoires.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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