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. 2025 Jun 2;96(5):1645–1659. doi: 10.1111/cdev.14260

Teaching Lessons, Learning Words: Mothers' and Fathers' Sensitivity During Teaching Uniquely Mediates Associations Between Early Familial Socioeconomic Risk and Preschoolers' Receptive Language Development

Lindsay Taraban 1,✉, Daniel S Shaw 2, Kristin B Nordahl 3, Ane Nærde 3
PMCID: PMC12379855  PMID: 40454544

ABSTRACT

Observed parental sensitivity during a parent–child teaching task and free‐play task was tested as mediators of the association between family socioeconomic risk and child receptive language at 48 months, consistent with family investment theory. Parents (n = 881 mothers; 624 fathers, data collected between 2006‐2008) and their 5‐month‐old children (52% male) were recruited from public health clinics in Norway. Both maternal sensitivity (measured at 24 months) and paternal sensitivity (measured at 36 months) during the teaching task mediated the association between family socioeconomic risk and child language, controlling for sensitivity during free play, which was not significantly associated with child language. Results suggest that both mothers and fathers make meaningful contributions to early language development via sensitive parenting, particularly in the context of teaching‐based interactions.

Keywords: fathers, receptive language, sensitivity

1. Familial Socioeconomic Status and Early Language Development

Early childhood is a critical period for the development of language, with important implications for children's success in a variety of domains (National Research Council (US) and Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development et al. 2000; Zauche et al. 2017). Early language abilities are associated with later social and cognitive outcomes, as well as being one of the strongest predictors of school readiness and academic success (Burchinal et al. 2018; Forget‐Dubois et al. 2009). For example, children's third grade reading proficiency is most strongly predicted by the size of their vocabulary at age 3 (Dickinson and Porche 2011). Thus, understanding the factors related to early language skill is critical for increasing children's school readiness and future academic achievement.

Children's language abilities are no doubt influenced by biology, with meta‐analytic work suggesting that approximately half of the variance in a child's spoken vocabulary is due to the genetic heritability of language (Stromswold 2001). Beyond genetic predispositions, research has established a clear association between familial socioeconomic status (SES) and children's early language abilities. The family investment model (Conger and Donnellan 2007) posits that parents with high levels of education and income are able to make greater investments in their children both materially and interpersonally compared to lower‐SES families who must expend greater effort to meet basic needs, which in turn affects children's development, including early language abilities (Sohr‐Preston et al. 2013). Children from low‐SES households tend to have lower productive and expressive vocabularies compared to their high‐SES peers, with differences evident by as early as 18 months of age (Fernald et al. 2013; Pace et al. 2017). SES is also negatively associated with young children's grammatical development and phonological awareness (see Pace et al. 2017), both of which are closely tied to early literacy. There are likely many factors that contribute to the strong link between SES and early child language abilities. Although SES is often measured using parental income, education, occupation, or a combination of the three (Pace et al. 2017), SES goes far beyond “amount of dollars” or “amount of education” that parents have attained. Instead, familial SES tends to associate with a host of other variables, including neighborhood quality (Kaiser et al. 2016), availability of age‐appropriate learning materials (Froiland et al. 2013), exposure to pollutants and other environmental toxins (Whipple and Evans 2022), access to high‐quality childcare (Flood et al. 2022), and sleep quality (Buckhalt 2011), all of which can impact language development. In addition, language‐supporting parenting behaviors in early childhood differ as a function of SES and are established predictors of children's early language proficiency (Madigan et al. 2019; Pace et al. 2017; Pungello et al. 2009).

2. Parental Sensitivity and Early Language Development

As noted above, the family investment model suggests SES‐related differences not only in the material investment children receive but also the quality of their interpersonal interactions with their parents (Conger and Donnellan 2007; Sohr‐Preston et al. 2013), including cross‐culturally (Ribeiro‐Accioly et al. 2021). Indeed, a longstanding body of research has indicated that SES is negatively associated with the quantity and quality of child language exposure, as well as opportunities for early language learning (Cartmill et al. 2013; Goldin‐Meadow et al. 2014; Rowe 2012). Specifically, parents from low SES households tend to speak to their children less frequently and use fewer words overall (Pace et al. 2017), use less complex vocabulary and grammar (Huttenlocher et al. 2010; Rowe 2012), ask their children fewer questions (Aram et al. 2013), and be less contingently responsive to their child's verbalizations (Catherine S. Tamis‐LeMonda and Bornstein 2002). Beyond these language‐specific parenting behaviors, general maternal sensitivity is associated with children's expressive and receptive language skills, as evidenced by a meta‐analysis of 36 studies (n = 7315 mother–child‐dyads) that found a significant positive effect (r = 0.27) of observed maternal sensitive responsiveness on children's early language development for children aged 1 to 6 years (Madigan et al. 2019). Sensitive caregiving has also been advanced as one mechanism linking familial SES with early language skill. Another meta‐analysis that included over 6000 children drawn from 17 studies found that maternal sensitive parenting was a significant mediator of the association between socioeconomic risk and preschool children's language abilities (Borairi et al. 2021). Both meta‐analyses, consistent with the vast majority of the research linking sensitive caregiving to child language, focused on mothers. Although father involvement has been linked to preschool children's language skills (Fagan et al. 2016; Varghese and Wachen 2016), research exploring links between paternal parenting and language development is relatively scarce. As a result, researchers have emphasized the need for studies that include measures of fathers' sensitivity and how this relates to early language abilities in their children (Madigan et al. 2019).

3. Parental Sensitivity and Child Outcomes From a Domain‐Specificity Perspective

Sensitive parenting, typically conceptualized as being warm, nurturing, and contingently responsive, is considered a core feature of parenting across many cultures (Mesman 2021; Mesman et al. 2018), and has been robustly and routinely linked to a host of child outcomes, including social–emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development (De Wolff and van Ijzendoorn 1997; Posada et al. 2021; Taraban and Shaw 2018). The field has tended to conceptualize and measure sensitivity in a generalized way, with the underlying assumption being that sensitivity shows stability across the different contexts in which parents interact with their children and has similar cross‐context predictability to child outcomes (Leerkes et al. 2012; Salter Ainsworth 1978). In contrast, the domain specificity perspective suggests that children and their caregivers can interact differently based on the context of the interaction, and that these context‐specific interactions shape child development in unique ways (Goodman et al. 2022; Grusec and Davidov 2010; Leerkes et al. 2009). The small body of research exploring associations between sensitivity and child outcomes from a domain‐specificity perspective has tended to focus on the distinction between maternal sensitivity in the context of distress (e.g., soothing a crying baby) versus in the context of non‐distress (e.g., engaging in play with baby). Sensitivity, regardless of context, reflects a general level of competence in caregiving and requires overlapping skills, such as being able to take the infant's perspective and effectively attend to cues (Leerkes et al. 2012). However, research has also indicated that despite being significantly correlated, sensitivity to distress and non‐distress share a meaningful amount of independent variance (i.e., correlations between r = 0.38 and r = 0.67; Leerkes 2011; Leerkes et al. 2012; Taraban et al. 2023). Consistent with attachment theory (Ainsworth 1978), which highlights the importance of a warm and responsive early caregiving environment, higher maternal sensitivity to infant distress has been found to uniquely predict a greater likelihood of child secure attachment and lower levels of emotional and behavioral problems, controlling for maternal sensitivity to non‐distress (Leerkes 2011; Leerkes et al. 2009; McElwain and Booth‐Laforce 2006; Taraban et al. 2023). Conversely, sensitivity in the context of non‐distress is theorized to be more important for early cognitive development. Theoretically, parental sensitivity is thought to influence children's cognitive development because infants who are responded to consistently and contingently learn that their actions produce consequences in their environment, leading them to develop a sense of “effectance” on their world, which motivates them to continue to explore and learn about it (Watson 1985). Additionally, children are best able to learn when in a neutral or positive—rather than high‐stress—state (Craig et al. 2004). Despite existing research interest in applying the domain‐specificity perspective to understanding early cognitive development (Leerkes et al. 2012), only two studies have directly addressed this question by simultaneously accounting for sensitivity to distress when examining associations between maternal sensitivity to non‐distress and child cognitive development. In the first, Bornstein and Tamis‐Lemonda (1997) found that maternal sensitivity to infant non‐distress at 5 months uniquely predicted infant attention and symbolic play abilities at 13 months, after accounting for maternal sensitivity to infant distress. In the second—recent—study, Taraban et al. (2023) found that maternal sensitivity during a non‐distressing task (i.e., parent–child free‐play) at 18 months uniquely predicted children's 24‐month productive vocabulary, accounting for the effects of paternal sensitivity during a challenging task (i.e., clean‐up task). Of note, most prior work examining the specificity of maternal sensitivity has relied on families with middle to high SES (for exceptions, see Leerkes and Zhou 2018; Taraban et al. 2023; Wright et al. 2018).

4. Sensitivity During a Parent–Child Teaching Task and Early Language Development

Although the few prior studies exploring the domain specificity of maternal sensitivity have focused on sensitivity to distress versus non‐distress, it is reasonable to assume that other types of contextually specific sensitivity may also make unique contributions to early development. In the current study, we were interested in whether for both mothers and fathers, sensitivity during a parent–child teaching task in early childhood would longitudinally predict child language development above and beyond more general sensitivity (sensitivity during free play). Unsurprisingly, numerous prior studies have linked observed sensitivity measured during parent–child free play with children's language abilities (e.g., Tamis‐LeMonda et al. 2001, 2004) Free play provides opportunities for engaging in joint attention, back‐and‐forth verbal exchanges, narration, and the labeling of new words, all of which support early language skills. In contrast to less‐structured free‐play interactions, parent–child teaching tasks—such as those used in the present study—capture parent–child interactions in which a child typically is presented with a puzzle or problem that is slightly too difficult for them to complete on their own. Parents are instructed to assist as necessary. Teaching tasks provide many of the same general opportunities for language development as free‐play tasks (e.g., back‐and‐forth exchange, narration, labeling), but consistent with theory reviewed above (Craig et al. 2004; Watson 1985), sensitivity in the context of learning may encourage young children to learn about and explore their environments, supporting their cognitive (and language) development. Although not examined in prior research, it is also possible that high levels of parental sensitivity during a teaching task may reflect a parent who is particularly skilled at and enthusiastic about helping their child achieve intellectual growth. This high sensitivity in the context of child learning may, in turn, be even more closely tied to the child's language development than is the parent's sensitivity more generally (i.e., during free play). Thus, although based on prior literature, we expected sensitivity during free play to positively correlate with children's language development, we expected sensitivity during a teaching task to be an even stronger predictor of this association and to predict children's language development above and beyond sensitivity during free play.

5. Paternal Parenting

Although over the past two decades, increasing attention has been paid to the contributions of fathers to early development, research examining associations between paternal parenting and child outcomes continues to lag far behind research on mothering (Cabrera et al. 2018; Taraban and Shaw 2018) Fathers no doubt play an important role in shaping their children's early development, although research has tended to find weaker or non‐significant associations between paternal—compared to maternal—parenting and child outcomes across multiple domains (e.g., academic achievement, executive functioning, behavior problems, healthy eating; Lloyd et al. 2014; Martin et al. 2010; Rodrigues et al. 2021; Towe‐Goodman et al. 2014). These weaker effects could be related to the fact that within the United States, mothers continue to take on the majority of caregiving responsibilities for their children, even when both parents are employed full‐time (van der Gaag et al. 2023). This difference in caregiving time contrasts with the culture of caregiving in Norway, where the current sample resided. Norway has enacted multiple pieces of legislation aimed at supporting fathers' ability to spend time with their children, including paid paternal leave following the birth of each child (Kjølberg 2017). Indeed, fathers in Norway spend more time providing childcare compared to fathers in other countries (Ellingsæter and Kitterød 2023). For example, as of 2018, 71% of fathers in Norway stayed home with their infant for at least the full 15 weeks allotted to them (Gram 2019). Thus, we anticipated that within this Norwegian sample, maternal and paternal sensitivity would have comparable levels of associations with child language development.

6. Current Project

The primary aim of the present study was to test sensitivity during teaching at 24 months (maternal sample) and 36 months (paternal sample) as a mediator of the association between family socioeconomic risk and children's 48‐month receptive language abilities, accounting for the effects of sensitivity during free play (Figure 1). Prior to testing the full mediation model, we tested direct effects related to parental sensitivity. First, we expected that sensitivity during teaching—but not sensitivity during free play—would predict child receptive language when both were included as simultaneous predictors (Aim 1). Second, drawing from family investment theory's tenet that SES would have broad and adverse consequences on parenting behaviors across contexts (Conger and Donnellan 2007; Sohr‐Preston et al. 2013), we expected family socioeconomic risk would be negatively associated with both types of sensitivity (Aim 2). The direct effect between higher family socioeconomic risk and lower child language has been previously established in the broader literature and in the current sample (Natale et al. 2021); thus, we did not include it as an aim in the present study. Finally, in the full mediation model (Aim 3), we expected maternal and paternal sensitivity during teaching to uniquely mediate associations between socioeconomic risk and child language after accounting for the effects of sensitivity during free play.

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

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Study aims. SFP, sensitivity during free‐play task; ST, sensitivity during teaching task.

7. Method

7.1. Participants and Procedure

Participants (n = 1159) came from the Behavior Outlook Norwegian Developmental Study (BONDS), a prospective, longitudinal study following children (51.8% male) and their families beginning at 6 months of age. Families were recruited from health clinics in two southeast regions of Norway between 2006 and 2008. In Norway, child health clinics are public, free, and attended almost universally. Eligibility criteria included having a child who was 5 months old at the time of recruitment and at least one parent being proficient in Norwegian (i.e., did not require a translator). A comparison of BONDS families with population statistics for births in Norway during the same period showed that the sample was comparable to the Norwegian population with some exceptions: within BONDS, there was a higher percentage of mothers with a university or college degree (58%) compared to the general population (50%), more firstborn children (47% vs. 42%), fewer mothers from outside Europe (6% vs. 12%) and fewer single mothers (5% vs. 11%; see Nærde et al. 2014 for additional details). The BONDS study was approved by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics and the Norwegian Social Sciences Data Services (approval numbers S‐06067; 2009/224a).

Assessments took place annually between child ages 12 to 48 months, in addition to an initial assessment when children were 6 months, in which both parents participated. Due to financial constraints and to reduce participant burden and dropouts, alternate parents (i.e., mothers or fathers) were targeted for annual assessments. Families were included in the present study if the mother had completed the 24‐month assessment (n = 881 mothers) and/or the father had completed the 36‐month assessment (n = 624 fathers), both of which included a series of parent–child interaction tasks from which observations of parental sensitivity were drawn. Although parents were encouraged to participate in all parts of the assessments, they were retained in the study even if they chose not to participate in the observational assessments at a given time point. Reasons for not participating could include not wanting to be observed, perceived burden related to bringing the child to the lab, or difficulties scheduling around work. Parents were compensated for their participation at each assessment, and children received a small gift following the test session.

Regarding attrition, 98% (N = 1136) of the original sample was retained at 24 months, 97.3% (N = 1128) at 36 months, and 96.7% (N = 1121) at 48 months. Mothers were targeted for the 6‐ and 24‐month assessments, and fathers were targeted for the 12‐ and 36‐month assessments. Retention rates for mothers (i.e., 93.8% between the 6‐ and 24‐month visits) and fathers (i.e., 94.5% between the 12‐ and 36‐month visits) were similar. Thus, overall study retention was high, and fathers and mothers showed similar rates of participation across time. Compared to mothers who did not participate in the observational tasks at 24 months (N = 260), mothers who participated (N = 881) were more likely to have a college degree (60% vs. 50%; t = 4.20, p < 0.001), and were more likely to be working (89% vs. 81%; t = 3.38, p < 0.001). There were no significant differences between the two groups on child gender, partnership status (i.e., married or living together) at 6 months, mothers perceived financial strain at 6 months, or children's reported language competency at 24 months. Compared to fathers who did not participate in the observational tasks at 36 months (N = 89), fathers who participated (N = 624) were more likely to have a college degree (55% vs. 42%; t = 4.01, p < 0.001) and were more likely to be married to or living with the child's mother at 6 months (99% vs. 93%; t = 0.2.73, p < 0.01). There were no significant differences between the two groups on child gender, fathers' perceived financial strain at 6 months, fathers' employment status, or children's reported language competency at 36 months.

7.2. Measures

7.2.1. Early Life Family Socioeconomic Risk

A cumulative risk score was derived from five parent‐reported measures of SES spanning from the child's birth to 12 months of age. A binary risk score was created for each variable, such that possible scores ranged from 0 to 5, indicating the number of categories that participants met high risk criteria for, with higher scores indicating greater risk. The five categories of risk and criteria for being classified as high risk were as follows: (1) Parental education (at least one parent completed < 2 years of high school; 15% of families); (2) Parental occupation (at least one parent unemployed and/or on welfare or staying at home; 12% of families); (3) Financial hardship (at least one parent reported enduring financial hardship over past year; 11% of families); (4) Housing status (at least one parent endorsed two of the following conditions: not owning a home (normative in Norway), home with fewer than two rooms, dissatisfied with home; 4% of families); and (5) Single parent status (parents not living together or mother being single, widowed, or separated from child's father; 5% of families). Risk categories were determined through literature review and extensive consultation with Norwegian colleagues regarding cultural norms and what is known to predict lower socioeconomic attainment across adulthood in Norway. In some cases, these items differed from common markers of risk in the United States. For example, in Norway's work‐centered culture, being a “stay‐at‐home parent” is not normative, and this variable tended to cluster with other markers of socioeconomic risk in this sample (e.g., recent immigrant status; lower socioeconomic attainment). See Natale et al. (2021) for additional details relating to the construction and validation of this variable.

7.2.2. Parental Sensitivity During Free Play and Teaching Tasks

At the 24‐month (mothers) and 36‐month (fathers) assessments, parent–child dyads engaged in a 4‐min free‐play task and a 6‐min teaching task. During the free‐play task, dyads were presented with a set of attractive toys, and parents were asked to play with the child however they liked. For the teaching task, dyads were first presented with a puzzle (3 min) and subsequently with a shape‐sorting toy (3 min). Slightly different toys were selected at each age, chosen to be too difficult for most children to manage on their own. Parents were instructed to help their child as much as they thought necessary, that it was not mandatory to complete the tasks, and they could choose to discontinue at any time. Tasks were coded using a five‐point rating scale (1, not at all characteristic; 5, highly characteristic) derived from the NICHD global rating scales (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network 1999), and adapted to fit the BONDS interaction tasks and toys (Nordahl et al. 2020). A team of five coders was trained to meet reliability criteria prior to the study rating process and then coded both the 24‐ and 36‐month interactions. Inter‐rater reliabilities were monitored in biweekly meetings where discrepancies were discussed. The current study used the sensitivity/responsiveness rating item, which was based on Mary Ainsworth's observational rating item (see Mesman and Emmen 2016) and reflects parental monitoring and responsiveness to the child's cues and behaviors, including signs of positive and negative affect. Higher scores on this measure reflect the parent being more attuned and responsive to the child's behavior and signals. Twenty percent of videos were selected at random to establish reliability using intra‐class correlations (ICC). At 24 months, ICCs were 0.78 for the free play and 0.74 for the teaching task, and at 36 months, ICCs were 0.69 for the free play and 0.75 for the teaching task. Thus, all ICC's were in the high moderate to good/excellent range (Cicchetti 1994; Koo and Li 2016).

7.2.3. Child Language

7.2.3.1. Outcome Measure

Child receptive vocabulary was measured at the age 4 assessment using the Norwegian adaptation of the British Picture Vocabulary Scale II (BPVS‐II; Dunn et al. 1997), which consists of 12 of the 14 original sets (Lyster et al. 2010). Over the trials of increasing difficulty, children were presented with 4 pictures and asked to choose which one corresponded to the word the experimenter said. An overall vocabulary comprehension score is calculated by the number of correct responses (verbal or nonverbal). The BPVS‐II has been shown to have good internal consistency for children 3 to 5 years of age (Cronbach α = 0.96; Dunn et al. 1997), and the Norwegian translation has also shown high internal consistency for children aged 3 to 16 (Cronbach α = 0.98; Lyster et al. 2010). Cronbach's alpha for the BPVS‐II in our sample was 0.81.

7.2.3.2. Covariate

At 24 months (mothers) and 36 months (fathers), parents reported on their child's productive vocabulary using a 6‐point scale (e.g., 1: doesn't speak yet; 4: speaks in 2‐ to 3‐word sentences; 6: speaks in long and compounded sentences). Children's productive vocabulary was included as a covariate to account for the effects of children's current language abilities on parental sensitivity and children's 48‐month receptive vocabulary.

7.3. Data Analytic Plan

Analyses were conducted in SPSS (24). Missing data were handled using imputation prior to testing study aims. Although regression analyses in SPSS support “pooled effects” (i.e., multiple imputation), the Process macro used for Aim 3 and our post hoc analyses does not support pooled data analysis. Thus, we used the first imputation of our multiply imputed data for all aims so that we could use the same dataset across aims. Of note, we did re‐run all analyses using both the first imputation and the multiply imputed data. Our findings did not meaningfully differ whether we used listwise deletion, the first imputation, or multiple imputation. To test Aim 1, whether sensitivity during the teaching task was a unique predictor of subsequent child language controlling for sensitivity during the free play task, two multiple regression models were computed. The first included maternal sensitivity during teaching and free play at 24 months as predictors of child receptive language at 48 months; the second included paternal sensitivity during teaching and free play at 36 months as predictors of child receptive language at 48 months. All predictor variables were entered simultaneously, and child gender and child concurrent productive vocabulary were included as covariates in Aims 1 through 3. We were conservative in our use of demographic covariates in Aim 1 (i.e., only child gender) as Aims 2 and 3 included the demographic risk composite score as a predictor (i.e., parental education, occupation, financial hardship, housing status, partnership status). To test Aim 2, the association between family socioeconomic risk and each type of sensitivity, we entered the family socioeconomic risk variable as a predictor of both types of maternal (24 months) and paternal (36 months) sensitivity. To test our primary Aim (Aim 3), whether parental sensitivity during teaching was a unique mediator of the association between familial demographic risk and child language, we used the Process macro for SPSS (Hayes 2013), which simplifies the analyses of conditional process models, including mediation models. In Process, the predictor, mediator, and outcome are entered simultaneously, producing a single set of results estimating the full model. In addition, Process automatically generates bootstrap confidence intervals, which account for possible non‐normality of the sampling distribution. These 95% bias‐corrected bootstrap confidence intervals are reported in mediation results tables. The nature of our analyses was confirmatory, in that we generated a priori hypotheses based on theory and available empirical articles; but also somewhat exploratory, given the novelty of exploring domain‐specificity in the context of teaching versus free play.

8. Results

8.1. Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Correlations

Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations for all study variables are reported in Table 1. All measures of parental sensitivity were significantly associated with one another, with the exception that maternal sensitivity during teaching (ST) was not associated with paternal sensitivity during free play (SFP). As expected, all sensitivity measures were negatively associated with familial socioeconomic risk and positively correlated with child receptive language; socioeconomic risk was negatively associated with child receptive language. Child gender was not associated with family socioeconomic risk or child receptive language, but it was positively correlated with all measures of parental sensitivity. Follow‐up analyses indicated that sensitivity was significantly higher for girls compared to boys across conditions [maternal SFP: t(877) = −3.41, p < 0.001; maternal ST: t(871) = −2.86, p < 0.01; paternal SFP: t(621) = −2.08, p < 0.05; paternal ST: t(619) = −4.29, p < 0.01]. Child reported productive vocabulary at 24 and 36 months (control variables) was both positively correlated with all parental sensitivity variables, with the exception that productive vocabulary at 36 months was not associated with paternal 36‐month SFP. Productive vocabulary at both time points was also negatively associated with family socioeconomic risk, positively associated with child receptive language at 48 months, and positively associated with female gender. The mean of 24‐month maternal SFP (3.56) was significantly higher than the mean of 36‐month paternal SFP [3.29; t(551) = 6.88, p < 0.001]; the means of maternal and paternal ST (maternal = 3.55; paternal = 3.59) did not statistically differ [t(550) = −0.93, ns]. The mean standardized score for children's receptive vocabulary in this sample was 97.6 (raw score = 40), which is similar to normative averages for children of this age (standardization sample standardized score = 96, raw score = 39.1; Dunn et al. 1997).

TABLE 1.

Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations.

Variable Age (month) Mean (SD) Range 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1. Mom SFP 24 3.47 (0.76) 1–5 —
2. Mom ST 24 3.47 (0.79) 1–5 0.50*** —
3. Dad SFP 36 3.31 (0.72) 1–5 0.14** 0.07 —
4. Dad ST 36 3.59 (0.70) 1–5 0.19*** 0.18*** 0.43*** —
5. Family Risk 0–12 0.47 (0.81) 0–4 −0.20*** −0.21*** −0.12** −0.16** —
6. Language 48 97.56 (12.72) 54–133 0.11** 0.21*** 0.10* 0.17*** −0.12*** —
7. Female Birth 0.11*** 0.10** 0.08* 0.17*** 0.01 0.01 —
8. Child Vocab 24 4.20 (0.75) 2–6 0.21*** 0.15*** 0.14** 0.17*** 0.03 0.22*** 0.27*** —
9. Child Vocab 36 5.69 (0.56) 3–6 0.18*** 0.14*** 0.07 0.12** −0.11** 0.30*** 0.16*** 0.41*** —
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Abbreviations: Child Vocab, child productive vocabulary as reported by mothers at 24 months and fathers at 36 months; SFP, sensitivity during free‐play task; ST, sensitivity during teaching task.

*

p < 0.05.

**

p < 0.01.

***

p < 0.001.

8.2. Aim 1: Associations Between Parental Sensitivity and Child Language

We hypothesized that both maternal and paternal ST would be uniquely associated with child receptive language at 48 months. As predicted, 24‐month maternal ST was positively and significantly associated with child 48‐month receptive language (β = 0.18, p < 0.001), controlling for maternal SFP, which was not a significant predictor of child language (β = 0.01, ns; Table 2). Also, as predicted, 36‐month paternal ST was positively and significantly associated with child language at 48 months (β = 0.11, p < 0.01), controlling for paternal SFP, which was not a significant predictor of child language (β = 0.03, ns; Table 2). Child productive vocabulary was a positive significant predictor of child language at 48 months in both models; child female gender was a significant negative predictor of child language in the paternal model only.

TABLE 2.

Aim 1: Maternal Model testing maternal sensitivity during teaching (ST) and free play (SFP) at 24 months as predictors of child language at 48 months; Paternal Model testing paternal ST and SFP at 36 months as predictors of child language at 48 months.

Maternal model (24 months) Paternal model (36 months)
B (SE) β B (SE) β
Sensitivity during teaching task (ST) 2.86 (0.60)*** 0.18 2.02 (0.76)** 0.11
Sensitivity during free play task (SFP) 0.15 (0.64) 0.01 0.59 (0.76) 0.03
Child productive vocabulary 3.51 (0.59)*** 0.20 6.34 (0.86)*** 0.29
Child female −0.94 (0.86) −0.04 −2.34 (0.97)* −0.09
F(df) 19.74 (4)*** 18.04 (4)***
R 2 0.08 0.10
N = 881 N = 624
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Note: Dependent variable: child receptive language (48 months); child productive vocabulary at 24 months was used in the maternal model; child productive vocabulary at 36 months was used in the paternal model.

*

p < 0.05.

**

p < 0.01.

***

p < 0.001.

8.3. Aim 2: Associations Between Familial Socioeconomic Risk and Parental Sensitivity

As hypothesized, higher socioeconomic risk between birth and 12 months was associated with lower levels of 24‐month maternal ST (β = −0.19 p < 0.001) and SFP (β = −0.18, p < 0.001), and higher early socioeconomic risk was associated with lower levels of 36‐month paternal ST (β = −0.17, p < 0.001) and SFP (β = −0.11, p < 0.01). Maternal SFP and paternal ST were higher for females. Child productive vocabulary was significantly and positively associated with both types of maternal sensitivity. See Table 3 for full results.

TABLE 3.

Aim 2: Maternal models testing socioeconomic risk (birth‐age 1) as a predictor of maternal sensitivity during teaching (ST) and free play (SFP) at 24 months; Paternal models testing socioeconomic risk as a predictor of paternal ST and SFP at 36.

Outcome Maternal models (24 months) Paternal models (36 months)
ST SFP ST SFP
B (SE) β B (SE) β B (SE) β B (SE) β
Socioeconomic risk −0.21 (0.04)*** −0.19 −0.18 (0.03)*** −0.18 −0.19 (0.04)*** −0.17 −0.12 (0.05)** −0.11
Child productive vocabulary 0.16 (0.04)*** 0.15 0.18 (0.03)*** 0.18 0.08 (0.05) 0.06 0.07 (0.05) 0.06
Child female 0.10 (0.05) 0.06 0.10 (0.05)* 0.07 0.21 (0.06)*** 0.15 0.10 (0.06) 0.07
F(df) 22.33 (3)*** 24.48 (3)*** 13.27 (3)** 4.99 (3)**
R 2 0.07 0.08 0.06 0.02
N = 881 N = 881 N = 624 N = 624
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Note: Child productive vocabulary at 24 months was used in the maternal model; child productive vocabulary at 36 months was used in the paternal model.

*

p < 0.05.

**

p < 0.01.

***

p < 0.001.

8.4. Aim 3: Mediation Models

We expected that both maternal and paternal ST (but not SFP) would mediate associations between early family socioeconomic risk and child language at 48 months. As predicted, for mothers, 24‐month ST mediated the association between family socioeconomic risk and 48‐month child language, controlling for 24‐month maternal SFP, 24‐month child productive vocabulary, and child gender [indirect effect = −0.32, SE = 0.12, CI = (−0.58, −0.12); Table 4]. Also as predicted, for fathers, 36‐month ST mediated the association between family socioeconomic risk and 48‐month child language, controlling for 36‐month paternal SFP, 36‐month child productive vocabulary, and child gender [indirect effect = −0.27, SE = 0.14, CI = (−0.568, −0.03); Table 4]. Paternal ST was higher for females in this model and child female gender was a negative predictor of child language in the paternal model only. We did not test SFP as a mediator of the associations between early family risk and child language because of a non‐significant association between SFP and child language in the first two mediation models computed.

TABLE 4.

Aim 3: Maternal and paternal models testing sensitivity during teaching (ST) as a mediator of the association between family socioeconomic risk and child receptive language at 48 months, controlling for sensitivity during free‐play (SFP).

Maternal model Paternal model
B (SE) CI B (SE) CI
Outcome: Parental ST
Socioeconomic risk −0.12 (0.03)*** [−0.19, −0.06] −0.14 (0.04)*** [−0.22, −0.06]
Parental SFP 0.46 (0.03)*** [0.40, 0.52] 0.41 (0.04)*** [0.34, 0.48]
Child productive vocabulary 0.08 (0.03)* [0.01, 0.14] 0.05 (0.05) [−0.04, 0.14]
Child female 0.05 (0.05) [−0.05, 0.14] 0.16 (0.05)** [0.06, 0.26]
F(df) 71.99 (4)*** 43.25 (4)***
R 2 0.25 0.21
Outcome: Child language
Socioeconomic risk −2.02 (0.57)*** [−3.13, −0.90] −0.80 (0.78) [−2.33, 0.74]
Parental ST 2.58 (0.60)*** [1.39, 3.76] 1.91 (0.76)* [0.41, 3.41]
Parental SFP −0.08 (0.64) [−1.33, 1.17] 0.56 (0.76) [−0.93, 2.05]
Child productive vocabulary 3.52 (0.59)*** [2.37, 4.68] 6.25 (0.86)*** [4.56, 7.93]
Child female −0.81 (0.85) [−2.49, 0.86] −2.29 (0.97)* [−4.20, −0.38]
F(df) 18.51 (5)*** 14.63 (5)***
R 2 0.10 0.11
Indirect effect −0.32 (0.12) [−0.58, −0.12] −0.27 (0.14) [−0.58, −0.03]
N = 881 N = 624
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Note: Child productive vocabulary at 24 months was used in the maternal model; child productive vocabulary at 36 months was used in the paternal model.

*

p < 0.05.

**

p < 0.01.

***

p < 0.001.

8.5. Post Hoc Analyses Comparing Maternal Versus Paternal Associations With Child Language

Maternal and paternal sensitivity were measured approximately 1 year apart in the present study, limiting the utility of analyses directly comparing each parent's contribution to child language. However, based on our findings that maternal and paternal ST each separately mediated associations between familial risk and child language, we were interested in preliminarily exploring the unique contributions of each parent to children's early language development. First, we tested a combined mediation model with maternal 24‐month ST and paternal 36‐month ST entered as simultaneous mediators of the association between family socioeconomic risk and child language. Both maternal ST [indirect effect = −0.46, SE = 0.19, CI = (−0.89, −0.13)] and paternal ST [indirect effect = −0.35, SE = 0.18, CI = (−0.76, −0.06)] were significant mediators in this model (Table 5). However, in a final model that examined simultaneous mediation by maternal and paternal ST while also controlling for maternal and paternal SFP, only maternal ST remained a significant mediator of the association between family socioeconomic risk and child language [indirect effect = −0.32, SE = 0.15, CI = (−0.66, −0.06); Table 6].

TABLE 5.

Post hoc test of maternal and paternal sensitivity during teaching (ST) as simultaneous mediators of the association between family socioeconomic risk and child receptive language at 48 months, controlling for the alternate parent's ST.

Outcome Maternal ST Paternal ST
B (SE) CI B (SE) CI
Socioeconomic risk −0.22 (0.05)*** [−0.32, −0.11] −0.19 (0.05)*** [−0.28, −0.09]
Child female 0.18 (0.06)** [0.06, 0.31] 0.24 (0.06)*** [0.12, 0.35]
F(df) 12.35 (2)*** 16.23 (2)***
R 2 0.04 0.06
Outcome Child language
Socioeconomic risk −1.87 (0.89)* [−3.61, −0.13]
Maternal ST 2.13 (0.70)* [0.76, 3.51]
Paternal ST 1.88 (0.78)* [0.35, 3.41]
Child female −0.42 (1.06) [−2.50, 1.67]
F(df) 6.78 (4)***
R 2 0.05
Indirect effect (maternal) −0.46 (0.20) [−0.89–0.13]
Indirect effect (paternal) −0.35 (0.18) [−0.76, −0.06]
N = 555
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Abbreviation: SFP, sensitivity during free‐play task.

*

p < 0.05.

**

p < 0.01.

***

p < 0.001.

TABLE 6.

Post hoc test of maternal and paternal sensitivity during teaching (ST) as simultaneous mediators of the association between family socioeconomic risk and child receptive language at 48 months, controlling for both parents' sensitivity during free‐play (SFP).

Outcome Maternal ST Paternal ST
B (SE) CI B (SE) CI
Socioeconomic risk −0.15 (0.05)** [−0.24, −0.06] −0.13 (0.04)** [−0.22, −0.04]
Maternal SFP 0.47 (0.04)*** [0.39, 0.55] 0.08 (0.04)* [0.01, 0.15]
Paternal SFP −0.00 (0.04) [−0.09, 0.08] 0.40 (0.04)*** [0.32, 0.47]
Child female 0.10 (0.06) [−0.02, 0.21] 0.18 (0.05)*** [0.08, 0.29]
F(df) 42.76 (4)*** 39.42 (4)***
R 2 0.24 0.22
Outcome Child language
Socioeconomic risk −1.82 (0.89)* [−3.56, −0.08]
Maternal ST 2.14 (0.78)** [0.61, 3.67]
Maternal SFP −0.01 (0.81) [−1.61, 1.58]
Paternal ST 1.41 (0.86) [−0.27, 3.08]
Paternal SFP 1.14 (0.84) [−0.51, 2.78]
Child female −0.41 (1.06) [−2.49, 1.68]
F(df) 4.82 (6)***
R 2 0.05
Indirect effect (maternal) −0.32 (0.15) [−0.66–0.06]
Indirect effect (paternal) −0.18 (0.13) [−0.47, 0.03]
N = 555
Open in a new tab
*

p < 0.05.

**

p < 0.01.

***

p < 0.001.

9. Discussion

Among a large sample of Norwegian mothers (n = 881) and fathers (n = 624), we found that both maternal (24 months) and paternal (36 months) sensitivity during a parent–child teaching task predicted child receptive language at 48 months, above and beyond parental sensitivity during free play, which was not significantly related to child language in either model. Further, after accounting for child gender and productive vocabulary at younger ages, mothers' and fathers' sensitivity during the teaching task uniquely mediated the association between family socioeconomic risk (measured between birth and 12 months) and 48‐month child receptive language. Post hoc analyses further indicated that maternal and paternal parenting each contribute unique variance to children's receptive language skills, although maternal effects on language may be slightly more robust. Although the total amount of variance in child language explained by our variables of interest was small in some cases (e.g., R2s of 0.02 to 0.08), it was relatively high for other models (e.g., R 2s of 0.10 to 0.27), and R 2 below 0.10 are considered typical for psychological research (Funder and Ozer 2019). Further, our effect sizes ranged from small to large (i.e., Pearson's r = 0.14 to 0.51), and tended to be larger than pooled effect sizes found in prior meta‐analytic work examining associations between parental sensitivity and child language (Madigan et al. 2019). At least for psychological research, effect sizes of r 0.20 and above are thought to signal findings with both explanatory and practical importance (Funder and Ozer 2019), suggesting that our variables of interest are explaining meaningful variability in children's early language, despite this being a complex, multidetermined outcome.

9.1. Sensitivity During Teaching and Early Language Development

A sizeable body of literature has linked general maternal sensitivity during infancy and toddlerhood to children's early language development (see Madigan et al. 2019 for a review). From a theoretical perspective, highly sensitive parents act as a “secure base” for the child, encouraging greater child engagement with their environment, and supporting language development through behaviors such as joint attention and following the child's lead (Barnett et al. 2012). Much less is known about associations between paternal sensitivity and child language (Borairi et al. 2021; Madigan et al. 2019). In the present study, both maternal and paternal sensitivity were significantly positively correlated with child language abilities at 48 months. Of note, and as discussed in more detail below, fathers in Norway tend to spend more time engaging in early childcare tasks with their children compared to fathers in the United States (Ellingsæter and Kitterød 2023), which could lead to stronger effects of fathering on Norwegian compared to U.S. children. Findings from this study are consistent with the small body of prior literature on paternal sensitivity and child language, which has also tended not to focus on U.S. samples. A recent meta‐analysis that included 9 studies (2 U.S.‐based) and 552 father‐child dyads indicated a significant positive effect (r = 0.18) between observed paternal sensitivity and children's language abilities [Rodrigues et al. 2021; other samples from the Netherlands, New Zealand (2), Canada (2), and United Kingdom (2)].

Although for mothers and fathers in our sample, both types of sensitivity were positively associated with subsequent child language abilities, we found that parents' observed sensitivity during a parent–child teaching task predicted children's language skills above and beyond general sensitivity, as measured during parent–child free play. While this study is the first, to our knowledge, to compare sensitivity during free play versus teaching as predictors of child language abilities, our findings are consistent with a growing body of literature that has supported the importance of examining the context in which sensitivity occurs. Previous work in this area has found sensitivity to infant distress to be more important for child socioemotional development, and sensitivity in non‐distressing contexts (i.e., free play) to be more important for cognitive development, including one recent study that focused on toddler expressive language, specifically (Taraban et al. 2023). Our project builds upon this literature by finding that within two non‐distressing contexts, high levels of parental sensitivity during a teaching task may have greater relative importance for child language development than sensitivity during parent–child play.

Our findings are particularly striking based on the large body of literature that has linked maternal sensitivity during play to early language development. Unstructured play provides rich opportunities for language development, including labeling, back‐and‐forth exchanges, following the child's lead, and joint attention (Barnett et al. 2012; Leigh et al. 2011). In fact, among a sample of parents and their toddlers, both mothers and fathers were found to display lower levels of negative parenting and higher levels of cognitive scaffolding and complex language use during a free‐play task compared to a teaching task (Kwon et al. 2013), though parents did speak more overall during the teaching task. The authors concluded that free‐play was associated with more positive parent–child interactions and language use compared to the teaching task. While these results seem to contrast somewhat with the current findings, Kwon et al. did not measure child outcomes. Thus, it is possible that although free‐play tends to elicit more positive parent–child interactions overall, sensitivity expressed during parent–child teaching may nonetheless be a particularly strong predictor of children's language development, and perhaps their cognitive development more generally. Sensitive responsiveness in non‐distressing contexts is theorized to encourage children to continue to engage with and learn about their environments, likely supporting cognitive development, including language development (Leerkes et al. 2012; Taraban et al. 2023; Watson 1985).

9.2. Socioeconomic Risk, Parental Sensitivity, and Child Language

Our findings are consistent with family investment theory (Conger and Donnellan 2007; Sohr‐Preston et al. 2013), which highlights that SES‐related differences in both material (e.g., access to resources) and interpersonal (e.g., parenting behaviors) parental investments are related to children's language development. Further, our findings are in alignment with prior literature that found maternal sensitivity to be an important mediator of associations between SES and early child language development (Borairi et al. 2021). We extend these findings to paternal sensitivity and to sensitivity within a teaching context. Thus, variability in the level of sensitivity expressed by mothers and fathers when their child is engaging in cognitively stimulating tasks may be one mechanism by which SES impacts early language development. Although not directly tested in this study, parents who can provide high levels of focused sensitive attention at times when their child is engaging in a cognitively demanding task may be able to better offset the negative effects of socioeconomic risk as it relates to child cognitive development compared to parents who are generally sensitive but not targeting learning opportunities specifically. The Norwegian sample included in the present study had low levels of socioeconomic risk overall (see Natale et al. 2021), indicating that sensitive parenting during teaching can meaningfully impact language development even at low to moderate levels of socioeconomic risk. Prior research has indicated that these effects may be even more pronounced in higher‐risk samples. For example, the Madigan et al. (2019) meta‐analysis indicated that effect sizes between parental sensitivity and child language were stronger for low‐SES compared to higher‐SES samples. In terms of application, our findings provide further support for interventions that aim to increase early school readiness through strengthening parental sensitivity in early childhood, and suggest that interventions targeting sensitivity in the context of early learning opportunities may be particularly effective (e.g., PlayReadVIP; Mendelsohn et al. 2011, 2018). Further, our findings suggest that such interventions would benefit from the inclusion of fathers or other essential caregivers (e.g., grandmothers/grandfathers, aunts/uncles and other relatives providing regular caregiving) whenever possible.

9.3. Observed Sensitivity: Considerations of Parent and Child Gender

Because maternal and paternal parenting were measured at different timepoints in the current sample (24 and 36 months, respectively), our data are limited in their ability to provide direct comparisons of maternal versus paternal parenting. However, we believe direct comparisons of maternal versus paternal parenting may still be of interest, and thus present post hoc analyses which could be useful for future hypothesis generation. First, mothers' mean sensitivity during the free‐play task was statistically significantly—although perhaps not meaningfully—higher than fathers' sensitivity during free play (i.e., 0.27 points higher on a 6‐point scale). Mean levels of maternal and paternal sensitivity during the teaching task were not statistically different from one another. In a combined mediation model which controlled for the alternate parent's sensitivity during teaching, we found that both maternal and paternal sensitivity during teaching continued to mediate associations between socioeconomic risk and child language at 48 months, suggesting that both parents were contributing unique variance to their children's language development via sensitivity during teaching. However, after also adding both parents' sensitivity during free play to the combined mediation model, the association between paternal sensitivity during teaching and child language dropped below the significance criterion (p = 0.10), and only maternal sensitivity during teaching continued to significantly mediate the association between socioeconomic risk and child language. Of note, this final model had extremely high statistical control by parsing both sensitivity by domain (teaching vs. free‐play) and parent gender within a combined mediation model. Given the complexity of this model, the smaller number of father compared to mother participants, and the differences in timing between maternal and paternal assessments, we do not think it appropriate to draw firm conclusions about the relative impact of maternal versus paternal sensitivity on child language from these results. Taken as a whole, these data nevertheless suggest that both mothers and fathers make important contributions to their child's early language development via sensitivity during teaching, with maternal effects appearing somewhat more robust.

Results indicated that both mothers and fathers in our sample tended to display higher levels of sensitivity with daughters than with sons. Few studies have examined the provision of sensitive caregiving as a function of both parent and child gender; however, the studies that have been conducted have tended not to find statistically reliable associations between sensitivity and child gender for either mothers or fathers (Cerezo et al. 2017; Hallers‐Haalboom et al. 2014; Schoppe‐Sullivan et al. 2006). As we did not have any a priori hypotheses related to sensitivity and child gender, we hesitate to draw conclusions about this finding. However, additional studies accounting for both parent and child gender may provide further clarity on whether sensitivity differs based on the genders of the parent–child dyad and how such differences might affect child outcomes.

9.4. Limitations and Future Directions

Strengths of the current study included our longitudinal design, observational measures of sensitivity for both mothers and fathers, and our ability to examine sensitivity from a context‐specific perspective. However, as with all research, there are limitations to acknowledge. Related to the observational tasks, because we parsed tasks by context (i.e., separate 4‐ and 6‐min tasks vs. 10 min total), each task was shorter than what is typically used in observational studies. However, both tasks fall within the range of established task length for coding sensitivity (for a review, see Mesman and Emmen 2016) and are consistent with prior literature on domain‐specific sensitivity, which has also utilized 4‐min tasks (Leerkes 2011; Leerkes and Zhou 2018). Additionally, the teaching task always followed the free‐play task and was also 2 min longer. Thus, it is possible that the free‐play task acted as a “warm‐up” for parents and children, or that parents behaved differently as a function of task length. However, mean levels of sensitivity were equal for mothers between the two tasks and were highly similar for fathers, as well (i.e., 3.31 and 3.59 on a 5‐point scale). It therefore seems unlikely that differences in sensitivity between the two tasks are driving our findings. Relatedly, the teaching task was more structured than the free‐play task, and it is possible that parents' sensitivity in the context of structured interactions, versus teaching‐specific interactions, are driving our effects on child outcomes. Future research comparing other types of structured tasks (e.g., collaborative puzzle; book reading) to teaching tasks is necessary to address this question. Also related to the observational tasks, sensitivity was coded using a single global item (sensitivity/responsiveness) from the NICHD scales. We chose to use this single item based on our specific interest in sensitivity, and to be consistent with prior research that has examined associations between domain‐specific sensitivity and child outcomes (e.g., Bornstein and Tamis‐Lemonda 1997; Leerkes 2011; Leerkes et al. 2012; Taraban et al. 2023), as well as Ainsworth's original conceptualization of sensitive responsiveness (Mesman and Emmen 2016). Prior work has utilized both single‐item and composite measures of sensitivity (for a review, see Mesman and Emmen 2016) and future research is necessary to determine whether composite measures of sensitivity or more general measures of positive parenting during teaching tasks have similar predictive ability for child outcomes.

Related to study design, due to funding constraints and to reduce participation burden and dropouts for the BONDS study, maternal sensitivity and paternal sensitivity were collected at separate time points (24 and 36 months, respectively). Our confidence in the findings of a unique predictive role of sensitivity during teaching for early language development is bolstered by significant findings at two different time points and with two different parents. However, from a methodological perspective, it would have been ideal to measure both maternal and paternal parenting at the same two time points. For example, it is possible that maternal sensitivity is a stronger predictor of child language compared to paternal sensitivity based on the 2‐year gap between the measurement of maternal sensitivity and child language, and 1‐year gap between sensitivity and language for fathers. Prior research has indicated that maternal sensitivity shows moderate stability across the first 3 years of childhood (Ciciolla et al. 2013; Kemppinen et al. 2006; Raby et al. 2015), whereas the stability of paternal sensitivity during early childhood has yet to be established (Brown et al. 2012). Additional research is necessary to understand how mothers and fathers jointly contribute to their children's language development as a function of child developmental stage and other family factors.

Related to generalizability, it is worth considering the unique characteristics of the BONDS sample regarding the generalizability of our findings. As mentioned, fathers in Norway tend to be more involved in daily caregiving activities compared to fathers in the United States based on paternal leave policies and other cultural supports for father involvement (Kjølberg 2017; Ellingsæter and Kitterød 2023). Thus, it remains to be determined whether our findings would replicate among a sample of fathers who may be less involved in childcare, such as fathers in the United States who still engage in significantly less childcare overall compared to mothers (Harrington 2022). Future research should explore characteristics of fathering that may moderate the impact of fathers on child outcomes, such as the number of hours spent with the child, engagement in routine caregiving tasks, and the strength of the father‐child bond.

Finally, related to the interpretation of findings, we tested and found support for a mediation model. However, it is plausible that high levels of sensitivity during teaching may also act as a moderator by attenuating the negative impact of high socioeconomic risk on language development, which should be explored in future research. Additionally, our confidence that sensitivity at an earlier timepoint is related to child language development at a later timepoint is bolstered by our longitudinal design and statistical control for children's productive vocabulary at 24 and 36 months. That said, associations between parental sensitivity and child language development have been shown to be bidirectional (Barnett et al. 2012), and it is also plausible that parents in our sample had an easier time showing sensitive responsiveness to children with more advanced language abilities. Repeated measures studies are necessary to more fully examine the bidirectional effects between sensitivity in a teaching context and early child language abilities.

Overall, results of this study suggest an important role of mothers' and fathers' sensitivity—particularly while the child is engaging in cognitively challenging tasks—in supporting children's early language abilities and attenuating the risk of low SES on language development.

Funding: This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway (Grant 2020438/S20), and by training grants to the lead author: F31 HD102162‐01 (NICHD) and T32 MH018951 (NIMH).

Data Availability Statement

The data, analytic code, and materials necessary to reproduce the analyses presented here are not publicly accessible, but are available upon reasonable request. The analyses were not preregistered.

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Data Availability Statement

The data, analytic code, and materials necessary to reproduce the analyses presented here are not publicly accessible, but are available upon reasonable request. The analyses were not preregistered.

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