Talking about Words Boosts Preschool-Age Children’s Vocabulary: Evidence from a Parent Intervention

Correlational research shows that children whose parents talk with them more often have stronger vocabulary and language skills than children whose parents talk to them less frequently. To test whether this relationship is causal and to test the impact of a light-touch parent intervention, we designed and implemented a program (“Chat2Learn”) to support parents in talking to their preschool-age children about words. Chat2Learn sent three text-based prompts per week for six months to a sample of nearly 600 low-income parents in the United States. Chat2Learn tested two different approaches. In approach one (the “definition approach”) parents were prompted to talk with their child about what a word means. In approach two (the “conversation approach”) parents were prompted not only to define the word but also to have a conversation using the word. Both approaches significantly increased children’s vocabulary (effect sizes of .37 and .23, SDs respectively) for words contained in our intervention – or treatment words. Quantile regressions further showed that the definition approach significantly boosted vocabulary for non-treatment words for children at the upper end of the vocabulary distribution. The definition approach also reduced by .17 SD parents’ beliefs that the child’s intelligence is fixed and cannot be changed. Neither approach changed parents’ feelings of stress, fatigue, or enjoyment of learning activities.