Couple Relationship Quality and the Infant Home Language Environment

SUMMARY

The amount of time parents spend talking to their babies is associated with children's later language skills, which are in turn important for the development of social skills. Researchers from the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge studied 93 first-time, heterosexual parents and their interactions with their infants to determine the effect the quality of a relationship had on parents' verbal interaction with children. The team asked parents about the quality of their relationship and gauged satisfaction levels using three questionnaires. They then gave the seven-month-old babies a wearable "talk pedometer" - known as a LENA device - that recorded parent-infant interaction for a full day when both parents were at home. Children's naps were excluded from the recording time. Software provided an automated analysis of the frequency of adult words spoken to babies and of parent-infant "conversations".