Improving toddlers' expressive language skills through attachment-based intervention: A randomized controlled trial with low-income, Latine families

Child Dev. 2026 May 12:aacag086. doi: 10.1093/chidev/aacag086. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

This study examined the impacts of Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) on expressive language of Latine toddlers living with their biological parents (N = 173), randomized to home-based Early Head Start supplemented by ABC, or a control group. Mothers' mean age was 30.9 years (SD = 6.5); toddlers (49.7% male) mean age was 13.0 months (SD = 4.1). Compared to controls, children in the ABC group produced significantly higher numbers of utterances and morphemes, types, and tokens, as well as greater mean length of utterances in words and morphemes. An indirect effect of ABC through dyadic mutuality was documented for number of utterances, types, tokens, and morphemes. Findings are considered in the context of the literature on the developmental impacts of parenting interventions.

Keywords: attachment and biobehavioral catch-up; dyadic mutuality; latine families; parenting interventions; toddler language.

Plain language summary

This is a study that evaluated whether a parenting program (i.e., Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up), implemented as part of an early childhood prevention program (i.e., Early Head Start), improved the spoken language skills of toddlers from Latine families experiencing poverty. We found that the parenting program did improve these toddlers' language skills in many ways, including the numbers and types of words they used. We also found that the quality of the interaction between mothers and the toddlers facilitated their language use. Our findings suggest that children enrolled in early childhood preventative programs would benefit from these more targeted parenting programs, particularly regarding language development.