Social relation

Turn-taking

Conversation

Language development

Mathematics

Biology

Statistics

Mathematics education

Developmental psychology

Philosophy

Paleontology

Cognitive psychology

Psychology

Longitudinal study

Vocabulary

Context (archaeology)

Linguistics

Communication

Vocabulary development

Language acquisition

Social psychology

Child Development

Children acquire language embedded within the rich social context of interaction. This paper reports on a longitudinal study investigating the developmental relationship between conversational turn‐taking and vocabulary growth in English‐acquiring children ( N = 122) followed between 9 and 24 months. Daylong audio recordings obtained every 3 months provided several indices of the language environment, including the number of adult words children heard in their environment and their number of conversational turns. Vocabulary was measured independently via parental report. Growth curve analyses revealed a bidirectional relationship between conversational turns and vocabulary growth, controlling for the amount of words in children’s environments. The results are consistent with theoretical approaches that identify social interaction as a core component of early language acquisition.

The Longitudinal Relationship Between Conversational Turn‐Taking and Vocabulary Growth in Early Language Development