This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Overhearable speech (speech that may occur when caregivers are talking to each other in a child's presence) constitutes more than half of children's language exposure, but its role in language development remains underexplored. Researchers from the University of Chicago, The New School for Social Research and Princeton University examined when and how English-learning children growing up in the United States understand words they overheard from their parents' conversations at home.
The study focused on word learning. Researchers compared children's recognition of words that parents reported as primarily overheard by children (i.e., "high-overheardness" words associated with adult talk, such as pot, salad and charger) with words that parents reported as primarily directed to children (i.e., "low-overheardness" words such as zipper, mirror and oatmeal). The study included 79 predominantly White and mixed-race U.S.
English-learning children who were assessed at 18, 24 and 30 months through parent-reported surveys of their children's recognition of household objects. The findings show that 24- and 30-month-olds could recognize high-overheardness words, while 18-month-olds could not. However, 18-month-olds with larger vocabularies by 24 months showed better recognition of high-overheardness words and a smaller recognition gap between high- and low-overheardness words than peers with smaller vocabularies.
This suggests that early word learning is dynamic and changes alongside children's developing language abilities and social experiences. The research is featured in a new Child Development article, "Developmental change in acquiring overhearable words from naturalistic contexts," by Yuchen Jin (University of Chicago), Ruthe Foushee (The New School for Social Research), Kennedy Casey (Princeton University) and Marisa Casillas (University of Chicago). The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) had the opportunity to speak with the author team to learn more about the research.
Author team: Yes, one finding genuinely surprised us. We had expected that children as young as 18 months would already recognize high-overheardness words. After all, by this age, toddlers have already demonstrated several skills needed to learn from overheard speech—things like following an adult's gaze, tracking conversations between other people and picking up new words without being directly addressed.
And in fact, lab experiments had already shown that 18-month-olds can learn novel words through overhearing. But that's not what we found. In our study, the 18-month-olds did not reliably recognize the high-overheardness words.
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