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Recent research has documented systematic individual differences in early lexical development. The current study investigated the relation ship of these differences to differences in the way mothers and children regulate each other's attentional states. Mothers of 6 one-year-olds kept diary records and were videotaped with their children at monthly intervals as well. Language measures from the diary were related to measures of attention manipulation and maintenance derived from a coding of the videotaped interactions. Results showed that when mothers initiated interactions by directing their child's attention, rather than by following into it, their child learned fewer object labels and more personal-social words. Dyads who maintained sustained bouts of joint attentional focus had children with larger vocabularies overall. It was concluded that the way mothers and children regulate each other's attention is an important factor in children's early lexical development.
Tomasello et al. (Sat,) studied this question.
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