Teachers’ responsive talk during group interactions: the challenge of temporal contingency in early childhood education and care classrooms

Research shows that child-directed speech (CDS) supports early language development, particularly through semantically and temporally contingent responses that help children link actions with adult speech (Masek et al., 2021). Most studies focus on dyadic home interactions, yet young children spend considerable time in educational settings where adult attention is shared among peers. Few studies have examined how CDS occurs in group interactions and how children receive responses in these contexts (Albert et al., 2025). This study examines teachers’ responses during structured group interactions in 30 Spanish ECEC classrooms, organized into three age groups (0–1, 1–2, and 2–3 years). Classrooms varied in size (6–16 children) and in children’s linguistic levels. We coded whether each child’s verbal utterance was followed by a temporally contingent teacher response and whether the response was directed to the child, another child, or the group. Findings indicate that children’s utterances were frequently followed by temporally contingent teacher responses. Significant age-related differences emerged: infants received more individual responses than older groups. In toddler classrooms, the likelihood of an individual response depended on the interaction between linguistic level and group size. Specifically, group responses were more common in larger classrooms, particularly for children with lower linguistic levels. These results underscore the importance of considering group dynamics when analyzing linguistic input in educational settings. Group interactions provide diverse opportunities for language exposure, which may support early linguistic development and inclusion.