How parent-child higher-order thinking talk supports early oral language and pre-literacy development

Children’s exposure to decontextualized language, language that is abstract or removed from the here and now, has been linked to long-term gains in vocabulary, syntax, and academic language. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this link remain unclear. The current study examined associations between parents’ and preschool-aged children’s use of higher-order thinking talk (HOTT), a form of decontextualized language involving inferential, abstract, comparative, and hierarchical reasoning, and children’s oral language and pre-literacy skills among lower- to mid-socioeconomic status (SES) families in the Northeastern U.S. (N = 71, Mage = 42.58 months). Utterance-by-utterance analyses of parent-child joint narratives and pretend play revealed that all dyads used HOTT, though with substantial variability. Parents’ knowledge of child development, but not their educational attainment, positively related to HOTT use. Both parent and child HOTT were positively associated with children’s oral language development, including vocabulary, syntax, and word learning. Notably, the conceptual complexity of HOTT was positively associated with language outcomes over and above its linguistic complexity. Mediation analyses further indicated that children’s HOTT use partially explained the observed association between parent HOTT and child language skills. These findings highlight how conceptually rich, decontextualized input, especially when it actively engages children, relates to early language development, offering insight into the forms of parent-child conversations that may foster higher-order thinking and linguistic growth.