In addition to our in-person and online studies, we also have study packages that you can
complete with your child at home! Each study package contains a recording device, a special t-shirt to place the recording device in, and 3-4 activities for you to complete with your child. In these studies, we have been looking at how children talk in different situations.
In one of our take-home studies, we looked at how older siblings modified their speech for their younger siblings, compared to the way they spoke to their parents. We asked families to do a picture completion game together where they directed one another about how to complete the pictures. We found that older siblings did indeed talk to their younger siblings in a special way! They used a higher pitch, more attention-grabbing words (e.g., “Look,” “See,” their sibling’s name), and fewer disfluencies (e.g., “uhh,” “um”) when speaking to their younger sibling compared to when speaking to their parents!