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Going Beyond Input Quantity: Wh-Questions Matter for Toddlers' Language

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Cognitive Science (2016) 1–18
Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN: 0364-0213 print / 1551-6709 online
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12349

Going Beyond Input Quantity: Wh-Questions Matter for

Toddlers’ Language and Cognitive Development
Meredith L. Rowe,a Kathryn A. Leech,a,b Natasha Cabrerab
a
Harvard University, Graduate School of Education
b
Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park
Received 19 January 2015; received in revised form 6 November 2015; accepted 18 December 2015

Abstract
There are clear associations between the overall quantity of input children are exposed to and
their vocabulary acquisition. However, by uncovering specific features of the input that matter, we
can better understand the mechanisms involved in vocabulary learning. We examine whether expo-
sure to wh-questions, a challenging quality of the communicative input, is associated with toddlers’
vocabulary and later verbal reasoning skills in a sample of low-income, African-American fathers
and their 24-month-old children (n = 41). Dyads were videotaped in free play sessions at home.
Videotapes were transcribed and reliably coded for sheer quantity of fathers’ input (number of
utterances) as well as the number of wh-questions fathers produce. Children’s productive vocabu-
lary was measured at 24 months using the McArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory
MCDI (completed by the mothers), and children’s verbal reasoning skills were measured 1 year
later using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Results indicate that the overall quantity of
father talk did not relate to children’s vocabulary or reasoning skills. However, fathers’ use of wh-
questions (but not other questions) related to both vocabulary and reasoning outcomes. Children’s
responses to wh-questions were more frequent and more syntactically complex, measured using the
mean length of utterance (MLU), than their responses to other questions. Thus, posing wh-questions
to 2-year-olds is a challenging type of input, which elicits a verbal response from the child that
likely helps build vocabulary and foster verbal reasoning abilities.

Keywords: Word learning; Vocabulary; Verbal reasoning; Fathers; Input; Low-income; Questions

1. Introduction

Children learn language from their social interactions with others (e.g., Bruner, 1981;
Snow, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978). Much emphasis is placed on the role of the quantity of

Correspondence should be sent to Meredith Rowe, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education,
504 Larsen Hall, 14 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: meredith_rowe@gse.harvard.edu
2 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016)

caregiver input in children’s language development (e.g., Hart & Risley, 1995), yet there
is increasing evidence that specific qualities of the input play an important role, over and
above quantity, in promoting vocabulary development (e.g., Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015;
Rowe, 2012). Thus, not all input is created equal, and more nuanced examinations of
important input qualities can contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms or pro-
cesses involved in word learning (e.g., Rowe, 2015). Input quality can be measured in a
variety of ways, and in this study we focus on fathers’ use of questions. Questions, in
particular wh-questions, are shown to be a beneficial type of input for toddlers’ language
learning (e.g., Hoff-Ginsberg, 1985; Ninio, 1980; Rowland, Pine, Lieven, & Theakston,
2003; Valian & Casey, 2003), and fathers, on average, are found to pose more wh-ques-
tions than mothers (e.g., Gleason, 1975; Gleason & Greif, 1983; Malin et al., 2012; Man-
nle & Tomasello, 1987; Rowe, Coker, & Pan, 2004; Tomasello, Conti-Ramsden, &
Ewert, 1990). Furthermore, questions may be a useful type of input for fostering not only
vocabulary skill, but also verbal reasoning skills, as they challenge children to reason and
provide verbal explanations. In this study we examine whether variation in fathers’ use of
questions (particularly wh-questions) relates to children vocabulary and verbal reasoning
skills and, if so, why. Before delving into the literature on questions and on fathers’
input, we first briefly review other input quality measures that foster word learning
around the toddler period, as they lay a foundation for mechanisms tested in this study.

1.1. Important qualities of input for toddlers’ word learning

A growing body of work on word learning during the second year of life suggests that
at this age children are able to pay attention to many aspects of the word learning envi-
ronment, compiling statistical evidence and combining information from different
domains (social, visual, auditory) to map words to referents (e.g., Cartmill et al., 2013;
Medina, Snedeker, Trueswell, & Gleitman, 2011; Smith & Yu, 2008; Tomasello & Far-
rar, 1986; Yu & Smith, 2012). Importantly, this body of work shows that there are certain
word learning situations that make the mapping problem easier than others. When parents
label objects during play that are visually dominant in the infants’ view, the infant is
more likely to learn the label for that object than when the object is not visually domi-
nant (e.g., Yu & Smith, 2012). Similarly, during this same developmental period, children
who have more responsive parents are on average more efficient word learners. Parental
responsiveness is thought to relate positively to vocabulary acquisition because it fosters
children’s pragmatic understanding of language as a social tool to share information, and
also because parents’ responses are often informative (“that’s a bunny” in response to a
child pointing gesture) and temporally linked to children’s actions and utterances (e.g.,
Tamis-LeMonda, Kuchirko, & Song, 2014). The fluency and connectedness of the input
matter as well (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015), highlighting the importance of back-and-forth,
high-quality conversational exchanges between caregiver and child in promoting vocabu-
lary learning. Not surprisingly, vocabulary diversity in the input is also helpful. For
example, controlling for the quantity of talk, parental vocabulary diversity and parent use
of rare words in informative situations that help the child understand their meaning
 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016) 3

(Rowe, 2012; Weizman & Snow, 2001), relate positively to vocabulary development. In
this study we build on this prior research that has focused on informative uses of input
that capitalize on children’s growing attentional skills, to focus on questions, specifically
wh-questions, as an additional challenging type of input for toddlers that may foster both
vocabulary and verbal reasoning skills.

1.2. Why questions and why fathers?

Research suggests that, at least in Western societies, parents ask children questions
from a very early age, and that parents increase in their question asking across early
childhood. For example, Pan, Imbens-Bailey, Winner, and Snow (1996) found an
increase in the quantity and variety of mothers’ questions between child ages
14 and 32 months. Questions are often divided into different categories. Wh-questions,
or questions framed with who, what, where, when, why, or how, are often more challeng-
ing for children as they require a more complex verbal response than a yes/no question.
Wh-questions are thus particularly interesting as they may directly promote vocabulary
development by encouraging children to produce verbal responses, which can include
labels for objects as in the case of a prompt “what’s that” question frequent during
book-reading interactions.
Parents’ use of wh-questions is associated with many facets of language development.
For example, children who hear more wh-questions in general are better able to compre-
hend and produce these question types themselves (Goodwin, Fein, & Naigles, 2014;
Hoff-Ginsberg, 1985; Rowland et al., 2003; Valian & Casey, 2003). Research on shared
book-reading interactions between mothers and toddlers in particular shows that toddlers
who hear a larger proportion of questions in this context have larger vocabularies on
average (Blake, Macdonald, Bayrami, Agosta, & Milian, 2006; Fletcher, Cross, Tanney,
Schneider, & Finch, 2008; Ninio, 1980). More recent research looking across book-read-
ing and toy play contexts finds significant positive relations between mothers’ use of
wh-questions with 3-year-olds and children’s concurrent vocabulary (Cristofaro & Tamis-
LeMonda, 2012). Thus, there is a consistent and growing body of evidence that parent
use of questions, particularly wh-questions, is positively associated with children’s vocab-
ulary skills. Nonetheless, parents vary widely in their use of questions within and across
social classes. As is found for the quantity of child-directed speech, research shows that
middle-class parents pose more questions to their children than lower-income parents, on
average (e.g., Heath, 1982; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991).
Even across socioeconomic strata, however, much of what we know about the link
between features of the input such as questions and children’s word learning stems from
mother–child interactions. Yet by taking a social-interactionist view on children’s language
learning, we must consider a more global picture of children’s everyday environments,
which for many children include interactions with fathers or male caregivers. Many
dimensions of fathers’ involvement in children’s lives, including warm and responsive par-
enting, availability in children’s activities, and engagement in caregiving responsibilities,
are linked to more positive cognitive, social, and academic outcomes in young children
4 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016)

and adolescents (Cabrera et al., 2004; Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, &
Lamb, 2000). For instance, low-income fathers who report reading, telling stories, and
singing songs more often have preschool-aged children with stronger pre-literacy skills,
sustained attention, and fewer externalizing behaviors (Baker, 2013, 2014).
Although both mothers and fathers engage with children in similar ways, there are also
noted differences (Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley, & Roggman, 2014). A case in point is in
the domain of communication with young children. Relevant to this study, fathers are
often considered more challenging communicative partners with children in that they use
more conversation-eliciting speech than mothers. For example, across both middle-class
and lower-income families, fathers are found to pose more wh-questions to their children,
on average, than mothers (e.g., Gleason, 1975; Gleason & Greif, 1983; Malin et al.,
2012; Mannle & Tomasello, 1987; Rowe et al., 2004; Tomasello et al., 1990). Critically,
as has been found with mothers, fathers’ use of wh-questions and clarification requests
with 2-year-olds has been shown to positively relate to children’s concurrent vocabulary
(Leech, Salo, Rowe, & Cabrera, 2013).
Building on the positive effects of wh-questions in children’s vocabulary learning, the
SES differences in parents’ use of wh-questions more broadly, and the finding that fathers
are found to ask more wh-questions than mothers, this study examines associations
between low-income fathers’ use of wh-questions with their toddlers and their toddlers’
vocabulary and verbal reasoning skills. We add to the previous work in three important
ways. First, it remains an open question whether fathers’ wh-questions will be more or
less associated with children’s vocabulary than other measures of fathers’ speech such as
total quantity of talk, or other types of questions. Within low-income families, fathers’
speech to children more generally (quantity of speech and diversity of speech) is found to
relate positively to children’s concurrent and longitudinal vocabulary outcomes, even with
mothers’ speech measures controlled (Baker, Vernon-Feagans, & The Family Life Project
Investigators, 2015; Pancsofar & Vernon-Feagans, 2006, 2010). Thus, we selected this
particular population for this analysis as an ideal test case. Toddlers in low-income fami-
lies are exposed to less input, on average, than their peers in higher income families, yet
since fathers across socioeconomic groups ask more wh-questions on average than moth-
ers, low-income fathers may play a unique role in supporting their children’s language
and cognitive development through eliciting challenging conversations (e.g., Mannle &
Tomasello, 1987; Rowe et al., 2004).
Second, we argue that looking at specific features of input in this way can tell us more
about the mechanisms underlying language and cognitive development than looking at
broader measures of quantity (e.g., Rowe, 2012, 2015). There is a substantial literature
spanning four decades suggesting that fathers are challenging conversational partners for
young children (e.g., Gleason, 1975; Rowe et al., 2004), yet the exact mechanisms to
support this claim have gone untested. In this study, we explore mechanisms by taking a
close look at the frequency and linguistic complexity of children’s responses to fathers’
questions. This approach allows us to more explicitly examine the prediction that wh-
questions foster vocabulary because they bring forward opportunities for children to ver-
bally participate in conversations.
 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016) 5

1.3. Questions and verbal reasoning

Finally, we are also interested in the extent to which there might be longer term
associations of fathers’ wh-questions with children’s verbal reasoning skills, as research
on wh-questions has mainly focused on their ability to foster vocabulary or children’s
own question asking. Reasoning more broadly is a cognitive process, oftentimes using a
logical set of rules, which is undertaken to achieve a goal when there is no obvious
solution at hand (Mayer & Wittrock, 2006). In this vein we argue that vocabulary
might help to foster verbal reasoning ability in that it provides the tools (e.g., lexical
items) children can use to manipulate concepts and facilitate reasoning, an accepted
argument in language and cognitive development more generally (see Gentner, 2003).
Furthermore, the wh-question, particularly the more complex “why” or “how” question,
may influence verbal reasoning as these questions challenge children to reason and pro-
vide verbal explanations, and they may also lead to children’s own “why” and “how”
questions, resulting in parents’ modeling of causal explanations (e.g., Callanan &
Oakes, 1992; Frazier, Gelman, & Wellman, 2009). Therefore, individual differences in
social-environmental inputs can lead to differences in specific child skills that have cas-
cading effects on later related skills (e.g., Smith & Thelen, 2003). In the case of this
study, we argue that fathers’ use of wh-questions could have both direct and indirect
effects on children’s verbal reasoning skills. Direct effects on verbal reasoning may be
seen in that these types of challenging questions often occur during expanded discus-
sions between parent and child involving causal relations or explanations about how the
world works. It is also possible that there could be indirect relations at play where
fathers’ wh-questions relate to children’s later verbal reasoning via children’s vocabu-
lary skill. That is, perhaps children learn vocabulary more immediately through social
interactions and compiling statistical evidence, yet the emergence of verbal reasoning
unfolds over a longer timescale with the help of vocabulary skill. Language itself is a
symbolic system that involves abstraction, representation, and reasoning to map labels
onto referents. Thus, it is feasible to hypothesize that children’s developing vocabularies
coupled with challenging social interactions such as when asked wh-questions could
help them to think more complexly and build verbal reasoning skills (e.g., Vygotsky,
1978).

1.4. This study

The goals of this study are to investigate direct and indirect associations between fea-
tures of fathers’ input with toddlers and children’s vocabulary and subsequent verbal rea-
soning skills. The specific research questions are as follows:
1 What is the variation in a sample of low-income African-American fathers in their
quantity of talk and use of questions with their toddlers?
2 Do fathers’ wh-questions elicit more conversation from children than other ques-
tions?
6 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016)

3 Are there associations between fathers’ sheer quantity of talk (number of utterances),
fathers’ use of questions (wh-questions and other question), and toddlers’ vocabulary
and verbal reasoning skills?
4 Does toddlers’ vocabulary skill at 24 months mediate the association between
fathers’ wh-questions and children’s verbal reasoning at 36 months?

2. Method

2.1. Participants

This study used data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project
(EHSREP), a randomized controlled evaluation of the Early Head Start (EHS) program
in the United States (Love et al., 2005). EHS is a federal program that provides services
for families at or below the federal poverty level with infants and toddlers (Administra-
tion for Children and Families, 2002). At 12 of the 17 EHSREP sites, fathers were
recruited to participate in the Father Involvement with Toddlers Substudy (FITS) (see
Boller et al., 2006 for additional information on recruitment and study characteristics).
Our sample (n = 41) was drawn from FITS sites serving primarily minority families.
For the present analyses, English-speaking, African-American fathers and their 24-month-
old children (22 girls, 19 boys) were selected if the family participated in the 24-month
data collection wave and children still remained in the study at kindergarten entry.
Fathers in the current sample were on average 29 years of age (Range = 18–52;
SD = 8.96). Sixty-three percent of fathers reported living permanently with their child,
and the other 37 percent reported non-residential status. Sixty-six percent of the fathers
reported that they were their child’s biological father; the other 44 percent of the sample
reported that they were the primary father figure in the child’s life but not the biological
father.

2.2. Procedure

At child age 24 months, father–child dyads were videotaped in their homes for
10 minutes of semi-structured reading and play during which fathers were instructed to
engage their child with the contents of three bags. In the first bag was the book, The Very
Busy Spider, the second bag contained a toy pizza and telephone, and the third bag con-
tained a toy barnyard with animals. The bags were numbered, and fathers were instructed
to play with the bags in order and that they could divide the 10 minutes as they liked.
Fathers also participated in an interview with the experimenter to collect demographic
information. Mothers participated in a similar interview, and additionally completed a
checklist of their child’s productive vocabulary. One year later when the child was
36 months old, researchers visited the families in their home and children’s verbal rea-
soning skills were assessed.
 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016) 7

2.3. Measures

2.3.1. Quantity and quality of father speech

The 10-min semi-structured father–child interactions when children were 24 months
were transcribed verbatim by research assistants trained to reliably use the CHAT con-
ventions of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES; MacWhinney,
2000). Each transcript was verified by a separate research assistant to ensure further
accuracy. The unit of transcription was the utterance, defined as any sequence of
words that is preceded or followed by a change in conversational turn, intonation, or
a pause.
Automated analyses of the transcripts using the CLAN program yielded the total
number of utterances spoken by fathers, which served as a measure of overall quantity
of speech. Also from the transcripts, we identified and marked each father utterance
that contained a question. Questions were then categorized into two types: wh-questions
and other questions. Questions that were framed with who, what, when, where, why, or
how were considered wh-questions (e.g., What animal is that? Who are you calling on
the phone?). All other questions, including yes/no questions, choice questions, tag
questions, etc. (e.g., Is that the dog? You know that? That’s a horse, right?) were
marked as other questions. In addition to raw numbers, we use proportions in our anal-
yses. Proportions were calculated for each father by dividing the total number of
wh-questions by total utterances, and the total number of other questions by total utter-
ances.

2.3.2. Child responses to questions

For every father question, we marked whether or not the child responded verbally.
Only children’s verbal utterances were considered responses, as we were interested in
examining the conversation-eliciting properties of questions. As long as the responses
were on-topic, we considered all verbal attempts to respond. Two trained research assis-
tants independently coded 15% of the transcripts to ensure reliability. Percent agreement
averaged 89% with a mean Cohen’s Kappa value of 0.87. One of the reliable research
assistants then coded the remaining transcripts. Responses were divided into responses to
wh-questions and responses to other questions. Using the CLAN program, we calculated
the frequency in which children responded to wh-questions and other questions, and mean
length of utterance in morphemes (MLU) for responses to each question type as a general
measure of the syntactic complexity of children’s responses.

2.3.3. Child vocabulary at 24 months

Children’s productive vocabulary was measured at 24 months via maternal report using
the words and sentences short-form of the McArthur Bates Communicative Development
Inventory MCDI (Fenson et al., 2000). The MCDI short-form consists of 100 lexical
items and parents indicate whether their child has produced the word. According to
maternal report, children’s productive vocabularies on the MCDI short-form ranged from
14 to 93 words at 24 months (M = 61.0; SD = 18.22).
8 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016)

2.3.4. Child verbal reasoning at 36 months

Children’s verbal reasoning skills were assessed 1 year later, using the Bayley Scales
of Infant Development, Mental Scale, 36 months (Bayley, 1993). Factor analysis was per-
formed on 39 items of the original assessment, which yielded a 13-item verbal reasoning
factor and a 6-item spatial reasoning factor. The verbal reasoning factor used in all analy-
ses reflected children’s ability to verbally sequence, compare, and discriminate properties
of objects (e.g., color, object location, temporal events). For example, children were
asked to sort pegs by color and to follow directions regarding placing objects either in
front, behind, or on top of various stimuli. Scores were created by summing the individ-
ual item scores (M = 5.59; SD = 2.71; Range = 0–10). All analyses with verbal reasoning
are done on a reduced sample (n = 30) due to missing data at the latter visit.

2.3.5. Control variable

Across and within socioeconomic groups, the range of parent educational attainment
varies considerably, and this variation is related to differences in the quantity and quality
of child-directed speech and child vocabulary development (e.g., Cabrera, Shannon, &
Tamis-LeMonda, 2007; Malin et al., 2012; Pan, Rowe, Singer, & Snow, 2005; Rowe,
Pan, & Ayoub, 2005). We thus included fathers’ years of education in our analyses to
adjust for these potential differences. Fathers in our sample, on average, reported earning
a high school degree (Mean years of education = 12.5; Range = 10–16; SD = 1.47).

2.4. Hypotheses

We pose several specific hypotheses in line with our research questions and the previ-
ous literature. First, we expect that fathers’ use of wh-questions will be positively associ-
ated with children’s vocabulary and verbal reasoning skills. Second, we hypothesize that
fathers’ wh-questions will be more strongly related to children’s vocabulary skill than
fathers’ quantity of speech, measured as number of total utterances. Third, we hypothe-
size that children’s responses to wh-questions may be more complex than their responses
to other questions and that if this is the case this could be one mechanism through which
wh-questions foster vocabulary learning. Finally, we propose that if indeed there is a sig-
nificant relation between fathers’ wh-questions and children’s verbal reasoning skills, that
this relation may be explained by children’s vocabulary abilities.

3. Results

Similar to past findings with low-income samples, we observed substantial variation in

our measures of father input (Table 1). On average, fathers in our sample produced 220
utterances, but there was a wide range from 66 to 378 utterances (SD = 67.8) during the
10-min interaction. Fathers also varied in how frequently they posed questions to their
children. On average, fathers asked 49 questions (SD = 23.34), comprising 22.3 percent
of fathers’ total utterances. Of the total number of questions, fathers asked 17 wh-
 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016) 9

Table 1
Father and child descriptive statistics
Mean SD Range Proportiona
Father
Utterances 219.8 67.8 66–378 –
Wh-questions 17.1 10.53 2–38 0.08
who 1.22 1.56 0–6 0.11b
what 12.59 8.73 0–32 0.69
when 0.05 0.31 0–2 0.003
where 2.27 3.44 0–14 0.14
why 0.22 0.52 0–2 0.02
how 0.73 1.41 0–7 0.03
Other questions 31.9 16.9 3–74 0.14
Child
Wh-Q responses 8.95 7.13 0–27 0.49
Other-Q responses 10.71 9.41 1–39 0.33
a
Proportion of total utterances.
b
All wh-question types reflect proportion of total wh-question utterances.

questions (what kind of animal is that?) (SD = 10.5; Range = 2–38) and 32 other ques-
tions (is that a dog?) (SD = 16.9; Range = 3–74) per interaction, on average. Table 1
presents a breakdown of the types of wh-questions fathers asked, and it shows that what
questions (M = 12.59) were the most common form of wh-question asked within this
sample of fathers. The vast majority of the other questions were yes/no questions
(M = 66%, SD = 17%). Next, we examined whether variation in fathers’ quantity of talk
measured as the total number of utterances and use of wh-questions and other questions
related to children’s language and verbal reasoning skills. Partial correlations, controlling
for fathers’ education (which was positively, yet non-significantly related to both child
outcomes) are presented in Table 2. Fathers’ total number of utterances spoken during
the interaction was negatively, but not significantly correlated with both children’s 24-
month vocabulary on the MCDI (r = .19) and 36-month reasoning skills (r = .14).
However, variation in fathers’ wh-questions was significantly and positively related to
vocabulary on the MCDI at 24 months (r = .50, p < .01) and to verbal reasoning skills at
36 months (r = .35, p < .05), again controlling for fathers’ education. Furthermore, these
associations between fathers’ wh-questions and child outcomes remained and were even
stronger when using the proportion of utterances that were wh-questions, which in
essence controls for quantity of talk (vocabulary, r = .61, p < .001; reasoning, r = .44,
p < .01). Unlike wh-questions, however, neither the raw number of other questions nor
the proportion of fathers’ other questions (out of the total number of utterances) was sig-
nificantly related to child vocabulary or reasoning (raw: vocabulary r = .01, p = .96; rea-
soning r = .02, p = .91; proportion: vocabulary r = .10, p = .59; reasoning r = .12,
p = .51).
To address the mechanisms involved in the association between wh-questions and chil-
dren’s vocabulary, we examined children’s responses to all fathers’ questions, as we
10 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016)

Table 2
Partial correlations between father input and child outcome variables, controlling for fathers’ years of educa-
tion
Child Outcomes
24-Month Vocabulary 36-Month Reasoning
Father utterances 0.19 0.14
Father number Wh-questions 0.50** 0.35*
Father number other questions 0.01 0.02
Father prop. Wh-questions 0.61*** 0.44**
Father prop. other questions 0.10 0.12
Note. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

hypothesized that wh-questions might be particularly challenging in that they require

more of a verbal response from children than other questions. On average, children
responded to 20 of their fathers’ 49 questions (SD = 13.9; Range = 2–58). As shown in
Table 1, children responded more frequently to fathers’ wh-questions (M = 49%;
SD = 26%) compared to other questions (M = 33%; SD = 18%), (t(40) = 3.94, p < .001,
Cohen’s d = .61). Furthermore, children’s responses to wh-questions were syntactically
more complex, measured using MLU, than responses to other questions, (t(36) = 2.09,
p < .05, Cohen’s d = .42). Specifically, responses to wh-questions averaged 2.01 mor-
phemes per utterance (SD = .92 morphemes), whereas responses to other questions aver-
aged 1.62 morphemes per utterance (SD = .64 morphemes). Thus, fathers’ wh-questions
were associated with more verbal responses and more complex verbal responses from
children than were fathers’ other questions.
To address our third research question, we fit regression models to determine whether
fathers’ use of wh-questions predicts children’s language and reasoning outcomes. We
used proportion measures rather than the raw number of questions, to control for quantity
of talk, yet the same pattern of results emerges when using raw numbers. Results dis-
played in Table 3 showed that the proportion of fathers’ utterances that were wh-ques-
tions was a significant, positive predictor (p < .01) of child vocabulary on the MCDI,
controlling for education (ns). Similarly, when predicting child verbal reasoning, fathers’

Table 3
Regression models predicting child vocabulary (model 1) and verbal reasoning (models 2 & 3)
36-Month Verbal Reasoning
24-Month Vocabulary
1 2 3
Father education 0.06 0.03 0.01
Prop. Wh-questions 0.51** 0.43** 0.15
24-month CDI 0.49*
R squared (%) 24.50 18.10 34.60
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016) 11

proportion of wh-questions remained significant and positive (p < .05) with education
(ns) controlled (Model 2, Table 3).
Our final question concerned why fathers’ wh-questions to 24-month-old children
might predict children’s verbal reasoning skills 1 year later. We hypothesized that chil-
dren’s vocabulary production might be one mechanism underlying the development of
verbal reasoning. Thus, we used guidelines proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986) to test
the mediation hypothesis that children’s vocabulary at 24 months explains a significant
amount of the association between father’s wh-questions at child age 24 months and chil-
dren’s reasoning skills 1 year later. The three scatter plots displayed in Fig. 1 show that
Baron and Kenney’s (1986) first three mediation conditions were met. The first panel dis-
plays the significant zero-order correlation between fathers’ wh-questions and children’s

12 100 12
Child 24-Month Vocabulary

Child 36-Month Reasoning

Child 36-Month Reasoning

10 10
75
8 8

6 50 6

4 4
25
2 2

0 0 0
0 0.1 0.2 0 0.1 0.2 0 25 50 75 100
Proportion Utterances that are Proportion Utterances that are Child 24-Month Vocabulary
Wh-Questions Wh-Questions

Father wh-questions β =.43** Child 36-month

reasoning

Child 24-month
β =.51** vocabulary β =.58***

Father wh-questions Child 36-month

reasoning
β =.15 ns

Fig. 1. For ease of interpretation, scatter plots from left to right show zero-order correlations between (1)
proportion utterances that are father wh-questions and child reasoning; (2) proportion utterances that are
father wh-questions and child vocabulary; (3) child vocabulary and child reasoning. The bottom portion of
the figure shows that child vocabulary measured at 24 months mediates the relation between fathers’ wh-
questions and children’s reasoning skills at 36 months, controlling for fathers’ years of education.
12 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016)

reasoning skills, (r = .44, p < .001), the second panel displays the significant correlation
between fathers’ wh-questions and children’s vocabulary on the MCDI (r = .61, p < .01),
and the final panel shows that children’s vocabulary and reasoning skills are significantly
positively related in this sample (r = .58, p < .001).
The final condition proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986) requires that the effect of
the independent variable (wh-questions) on the dependent variable (child reasoning) must
be significantly reduced after adding the mediating variable (child vocabulary) to the
model. Model 3 in Table 3 shows that after controlling for father education, the initial
effect of wh-questions on verbal reasoning from Model 2 (b = 0.43; p < .01) was reduced
to non-significance b = 0.15; p = ns) upon the inclusion of child vocabulary. In this
model, children’s 24-month vocabulary was a significant positive predictor (b = 0.58;
p < .001) of 36-month reasoning skills. Bootstrapping analyses (Preacher & Hayes, 2004)
to test the significance of the indirect effect of 24-month vocabulary on the relation
between wh-questions and 36-month reasoning gave a 95% confidence interval of 5.83 to
33.89 (unstandardized). As this interval does not include zero, we conclude that children’s
24-month vocabulary skills significantly mediate the relation between fathers’ wh-ques-
tions and children’s 36-month verbal reasoning skills (Fig. 1). In a final model (not
shown) we tested whether there was a significant interaction between fathers’ wh-ques-
tions and children’s MCDI scores in predicting verbal reasoning 1 year later. The interac-
tion term was not significant; thus, the positive association between wh-questions in the
input and verbal reasoning did not differ by children’s vocabulary level.

4. Discussion

This study adds to the previous literature by showing that within a low-income sample,
variation in a specific feature of fathers’ verbal input (e.g., wh-questions), but not the
quantity of overall input, is positively and significantly related to both children’s concur-
rent vocabulary skill on the MCDI and to their verbal reasoning abilities 1 year later. We
find that fathers’ wh-questions might be particularly useful in fostering vocabulary
because they more often elicit verbal responses and more complex verbal responses from
toddlers than other types of questions. Finally, our results suggest that the direct associa-
tion found between fathers’ wh-questions and children’s later verbal reasoning skills at
36 months is due, in part, to children’s vocabulary abilities. Thus, these current findings
add to our growing understanding of mechanisms involved in word learning from social
interactions and the consequences for cognitive development more broadly. We expand
on these issues in the following discussion.
First, it is worth highlighting that similar to previous work we found that even within
a relatively homogeneous low-income sample, there was still large variation in caregiver
input that related positively to children’s language and cognitive outcomes (e.g., Hirsh-
Pasek et al., 2015; Malin et al., 2012; Pan et al., 2005; Rowe et al., 2005). This is
important in and of itself, as it provides further evidence that low-income fathers vary
extensively in the input they offer their children. Despite the fact that, on average, they
 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016) 13

fall behind their middle-class counterparts in measures of communicative input, some of

the low-income African-American fathers in this sample posed more than 70 questions,
and 35 wh-questions, to their toddlers in a 10-min interaction—a number that would be
considered high for a parent of any background (see Cristofaro & Tamis-LeMonda, 2012
and Goodwin et al., 2014 for some comparisons with low-income and middle-income
mothers).
In this study, quantity of fathers’ input measured as the total number of utterances pro-
duced during the interaction did not relate to child outcomes. Thus, our data do not sup-
port the general positive effects of input quantity seen in the literature (see Hoff, 2006
for a review). However, there have been other studies, also with entirely low-income
samples, that have failed to find input quantity effects while finding input quality effects.
For example, Pan et al. (2005) found effects of diversity of low-income mothers’ vocabu-
lary and not of quantity of talk on children’s vocabulary growth. They noted two
hypotheses for why this might be the case, both of which are relevant to this study. The
first is that relying on a 10-minute interaction of book reading and toy play (as was done
in this study and in the Pan et al., 2005 study) might not be a long enough sample to see
robust quantity effects. Indeed, many other studies with strong input quantity effects used
longer samples (e.g., Hart & Risley, 1995; Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons,
1991; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013). The second hypothesis is that quantity might not be
the driving force behind differences in child vocabulary development, and that variation
in specific features of the input (such as asking questions) may play a larger role. For
example, previous research indicates average SES differences in parents’ use of questions
with higher SES parents posing more questions than lower-SES parents (e.g., Hart & Ris-
ley, 1995; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991). Furthermore, parents who pose more questions also talk
more (Hart & Risley, 1995). Thus, the generally positive effects of input quantity in
higher-SES or more diverse samples may be due, in part, to the high correlation between
quantity and quality measures that is compromised in lower-income samples where the
uses of talk differ in important ways (e.g., Pan et al., 2005). Our current results support
this hypothesis and again highlight the importance of examining specific features or quali-
ties of the input.
Despite the null effect of input quantity in this study, the number and proportion of
wh-questions fathers posed to toddlers was significantly positively related to child vocab-
ulary and verbal reasoning. These positive effects of wh-questions are consistent with pre-
vious work highlighting the beneficial outcomes of parent questions for children’s
vocabulary learning (Cristofaro & Tamis-LeMonda, 2012), for their own development of
question forms (Rowland et al., 2003) and for their conceptual development more broadly
(e.g., Frazier et al., 2009). However, the current findings add to that body of work in
pointing to some potential mechanisms that explain why asking wh-questions is important
for the development of vocabulary and for verbal reasoning. For example, we found that
it was wh-questions in particular, rather than all father questions, that related to children’s
vocabulary and verbal reasoning. Our analysis of children’s responses to all father ques-
tions revealed that children were more often responding to wh-questions, and their
responses to wh-questions were more linguistically complex (as measured by MLU) than
14 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016)

responses to other questions. Thus, one mechanism by which wh-questions are beneficial
in fostering vocabulary may be that these questions elicit more verbal participation from
children during father–child conversations. Furthermore, and most important, the variation
in how often fathers’ posed wh-questions was positively and significantly related to chil-
dren’s vocabulary measured independently from the father–child interaction as well as
children’s verbal reasoning 1 year later. These results suggest that these input effects are
cumulative and long-lasting. Of course, our analyses do not prove causality of effects,
but they do suggest that fathers’ wh-questions may be a specific type of input that pro-
motes toddlers’ vocabulary and verbal reasoning skills.
Our final result that children’s vocabulary mediates the relation between fathers’ wh-
questions and children’s later verbal reasoning is interesting and worthy of more discus-
sion. We know that by 24 months, children have acquired a large number of words and
are adept at using different types of input from their environment to add to their lexicons
(e.g., Yu & Smith, 2012). We argue that wh-questions, coupled with children’s ability to
pay attention to salient attentional and non-verbal cues in the environment, results in an
efficient and rapid way to practice verbally demonstrating their ability to link referents to
objects. Or, in the case where the child might not know the answer to the wh-question,
they are likely to get an answer from the father at just the time when they are paying
attention to the referent in question, making the label easier to learn (e.g., Cartmill et al.,
2013). The subsequent development of verbal reasoning skills is thus a reflection of the
abstract and representational processes that underlie this word learning and question-
answering process. While the acquisition of vocabulary may result directly from environ-
mental inputs and develop rapidly at this age and under these ideal communicative cir-
cumstances, verbal reasoning may be a product of related interacting systems (the
environment, word learning mechanisms, general cognitive mechanisms) that unfold over
a longer time scale (e.g., Smith & Thelen, 2003). In the current sample, the vast majority
(more than two-thirds) of fathers’ wh-questions were of the “what” sort, and thus
requested responses consisting of verbal labels or descriptions. A much smaller percent-
age (less than one-third) were more challenging “why” or “how” questions that requested
some verbal reasoning on the part of the child. Thus, for children of this age, the wh-
questions may primarily build vocabulary, yet also provide children with opportunities to
use their language skills to reason about the world, and children’s vocabulary knowledge
itself provides them with the conceptual tools to further their reasoning abilities as they
develop. There are feasibly other possible explanations for our findings and there are
some limitations to this study that hinder our ability to test this theory further. Most nota-
ble is that no verbal reasoning measure was available at age 2. Thus, we were not able to
statistically examine change over time in this skill and whether the scenario we presented
really unfolded across this developmental period.
Further limitations of this study include the nature of the sample. Given the relatively
small sample size, we chose to control for father education, as previous work has strongly
linked more education to greater quantity and quality of child-directed speech. However,
there may have been other factors that were omitted here but also relate to the child out-
comes. In addition, the fathers who agreed to participate in FITS were more likely to be
 M. L. Rowe, K. A. Leech, N. Cabrera / Cognitive Science (2016) 15

employed and have higher levels of education than fathers who did not participate (see
Cabrera et al., 2004; Tamis-LeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, & Lamb, 2004). Thus, our sam-
ple may not generalize to the average low-income African-American father in the United
States. Second, while past work has shown that associations between fathers’ quantity of
input and child vocabulary hold after controlling for mothers’ input quantity, it remains
unknown whether fathers’ use of questions in this sample would still relate to child out-
comes after taking into account mothers’ child-directed speech.
In sum, fathers are challenging communicative partners for toddlers (e.g., Mannle &
Tomasello, 1987) in that they pose a large number of conversational-eliciting utterances.
These utterances, particularly wh-questions, do indeed elicit complex talk from children
and are predictive of children’s concurrent vocabulary and later verbal reasoning skills.
This study provides one example of how examining a specific feature of the input can
shed light on the mechanisms involved in how children learn language from social inter-
actions with others. The more we understand about the input qualities that matter, the
more we will learn about the word learning process more generally.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by an NIH grant (R03 from NICHD: HD066017) to Nata-
sha Cabrera and Meredith Rowe. We are grateful to Bridget Mullan for her administrative
work on this project, and to Jenessa Malin, Elizabeth Karberg, Virginia Salo, Ran Wei,
Simone Templeton, Jeff Wang, Sophia Castro, and Jennifer Anderson for help with tran-
scription, coding, and data processing. We also thank Paul Harris for helpful conversa-
tions and for comments on the manuscript.

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