Language Development Research (Feb 2022)

COVID-19 first lockdown as a window into language acquisition: associations between caregiver-child activities and vocabulary gains

  • Agnieszka Dynak,
  • Alaa Almohammadi,
  • Aleksander Veraksa,
  • Alex de Carvalho,
  • Anne-Caroline Fiévet,
  • Aslı Aktan-Erciyes,
  • Cara Cashon,
  • Caroline Frances Rowland,
  • Catherine Laing,
  • Christina Bergmann,
  • Christina Keller,
  • Christopher Fennell,
  • Cielke Hendriks,
  • Daniela Santos Oliveira,
  • Elena Andonova,
  • Erin Hannon,
  • Ewa Haman,
  • Grzegorz Krajewski,
  • Haifa Alroqi,
  • Hila Gendler-Shalev,
  • Jeanne Shinskey,
  • Jessica Hay,
  • Julien Mayor,
  • Junko Kanero,
  • Karli Nave,
  • Karolina Mieszkowska,
  • Katherine Golway,
  • Khadeejah Alaslani,
  • Kolbie Vincent,
  • Lucy M. Anderson,
  • Luis Muñoz,
  • Lynn Perry,
  • Magdalena Łuniewska,
  • Margarita Gavrilova,
  • Marina Kalashnikova,
  • Michael C Frank,
  • Michal Zivan,
  • Mihaela Barokova,
  • Mireille Babineau,
  • Naomi Havron,
  • Naomi J. Aldrich,
  • Natalia Kartushina,
  • Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez,
  • Nevena Dimitrova,
  • Nivedita Mani,
  • Nonah Olesen,
  • Rebecca A. Lundwall,
  • Rola Farah,
  • Shannon P. Gibson,
  • Stephanie Custode,
  • Suzanne Aussems,
  • Tzipi Horowitz-kraus

DOI
https://doi.org/10.34842/abym-xv34
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 1

Abstract

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The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments. This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources (e.g., daycares) provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development. The vocabularies of 1742 children aged8-36 months across 13 countries and 12 languages were evaluated at the beginning and end of the first lockdown period in their respective countries(from March to September 2020). Children who had less passive screen exposure and whose caregivers read more to them showed larger gains in vocabulary development during lockdown, after controlling for SES and other caregiver-child activities. Children also gained more words than expected (based on normative data) during lockdown; either caregivers were more aware of their child’s development or vocabulary development benefited from intense caregiver-child interaction during lockdown.

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