Less is More: Parent Talk and Child Executive Function from Age 5 to 6

This longitudinal study examines different domains of parenting as independent predictors of gains in children’s executive function (EF). Day-long naturalistic audio recordings of family talk were gathered at Time 1 for 70 children from England (40 girls, M_age = 5.41 years, SD = .33; 85.7% of caregivers had degree-level education), alongside remote observations of parent-child dyads (87.1% mothers) engaging in a 5-minute structured play task, which was coded for parent responsiveness, positive control, and talk complexity. At Time 1 and one year later at Time 2 (M_age = 6.42 years, SD = .31), children completed three EF tasks (Fish Flanker, Backwards Animal Span, Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders) and a measure of receptive vocabulary. Contrary to expectations, parent talk quantity (adult word count) at home was inversely associated with later EF, suggesting that greater talk by parents may limit opportunities for children to practice self-regulation. Parent responsiveness and positive control in structured play showed independent positive associations with children’s EF concurrently but not over time. These findings highlight the importance of including a broad range of parental measures to investigate social influences on EF.