Project Overview

  • Status: COMPLETE
  • 21 participating labs collected data in 14 countries
  • 467 babies tested and 668 CDIs collected
  • 45 authors on Journal of Child Language article

In this project we explored whether early preference for Infant Directed Speech (IDS) is linked to later vocabulary size. For instance, does preference for IDS predictx infants’ vocabulary? Does the relation between IDS preference and vocabulary size change over development? And are there any systematic differences in the strength of this relationship across language communities?

Infants’ preference for IDS was tested as part of the MB1 project, and follow-up CDI data was collected from a subsample of this dataset at 18 and 24 months of age.

A total of 341 (18 months) and 327 (24 months) infants were tested across 21 laboratories. In neither preregistered analyses with North American and UK English, nor exploratory analyses with a larger sample was there a relation between IDS preference and later vocabulary. In the manuscript, we discuss the implications of this finding in light of recent work suggesting that IDS preference measured in the laboratory has low test-retest reliability (MB1T).

Project Lead

Contributors

NOTE: Default table ordering is by contributor’s first name. You can filter, group, and/or sort entries by any field.

Publication

MB1L logo
Soderstrom, M., Rocha-Hidalgo, J., Muñoz, L. E., Bochynska, A., Werker, J. F., Skarabela, B., Seidl, A., Ryjova, Y., Rennels, J. L., Potter, C., Paulus, M., Ota, M., Olesen, N. M., Nave, K., Mayor, J., Martin, A., Machon, L. C., Lew-Williams, C., Ko, E., Kim, H., Kartushina, N., ... Tsui, A. S. M. (2024). Testing the relationship between preferences for infant-directed speech and vocabulary development: A multi-lab study. Journal of Child Language, 52(5), 984-1009. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000254
View full author list
Melanie Soderstrom
Joscelin Rocha-Hidalgo
Luis E. Muñoz
Agata Bochynska
Janet F. Werker
Barbora Skarabela
Amanda Seidl
Yana Ryjova
Jennifer L. Rennels
Christine E. Potter
Markus Paulus
Mitsuhiko Ota
Nonah M. Olesen
Karli M. Nave
Julien Mayor
Alia Martin
Lauren C. Machon
Casey Lew-Williams
Eon-Suk Ko
Hyunji Kim
Natalia Kartushina
Marina Kammermeier
Andrew Jessop
Jessica F. Hay
Naomi Havron
Erin E. Hannon
J. Kiley Hamlin
Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez
Anja Gampe
Tom Fritzsche
Michael C. Frank
Samantha Durrant
Catherine Davies
Cara Cashon
Krista Byers-Heinlein
Veronica Boyce
Alexis K. Black
Christina Bergmann
Laura Anderson
Mohammed K. AlShakhori
Ali H. Al-Hoorie
Angeline Sin Mei Tsui