The temporal structure of parent talk to toddlers about objects

Slone, Lauren K.; Abney, Drew H.; Smith, Linda B.; Yu, Chen

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105266

The temporal structure of parent talk to toddlers about objects

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Slone, Lauren K., Abney, Drew H., Smith, Linda B. and Yu, Chen (2023) The temporal structure of parent talk to toddlers about objects. Cognition, 230. ISSN 0010-0277

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Abstract

Toddlers learn words in the context of speech from adult social partners. The present studies quantitatively describe the temporal context of parent speech to toddlers about objects in individual real-world interactions. We show that at the temporal scale of a single play episode, parent talk to toddlers about individual objects is predominantly, but not always, clustered. Clustered speech is characterized by repeated references to the same object close in time, interspersed with lulls in speech about the object. Clustered temporal speech patterns mirror temporal patterns observed at longer timescales, and persisted regardless of play context. Moreover, clustered speech about individual novel objects predicted toddlers' learning of those objects' novel names. Clustered talk may be optimal for toddlers' word learning because it exploits domain-general principles of human memory and attention, principles that may have evolved precisely because of the clustered structure of natural events important to humans, including human behavior.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	child development,language,learning,temporal structure,experimental and cognitive psychology,language and linguistics,developmental and educational psychology,linguistics and language,cognitive neuroscience ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200/3205
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	19 Jun 2026 14:22
Last Modified:	19 Jun 2026 14:22
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103454
DOI:	10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105266

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