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Published in final edited form as: Semin Speech Lang. 2026 Mar 11;46(3):213–231. doi: 10.1055/a-2796-3785 Search in PMC Search in PubMed View in NLM Catalog Add to search Caregiver child interactions: Utilizing an ecobehavioral model to investigate the effect of activity contexts on African American English use Karina Saechao Karina Saechao , M.A., CCC-SLP 1 Child Language Doctoral Program, University of Kansas Ph.D. Student Find articles by Karina Saechao 1 , Meghan Matuszeski Meghan Matuszeski 2 Center for Childhood Deafness, Language, & Learning, Boys Town National Research Hospital Research Assistant Find articles by Meghan Matuszeski 2 , Yo Jackson Yo Jackson , Ph.D., ABPP 3 School of Science & Engineering, Tulane University Professor Find articles by Yo Jackson 3 , Claire Selin Claire Selin , Ph.D., CCC-SLP 4 Center for Childhood Deafness, Language, & Learning, Boys Town National Research Hospital Research Scientist I Find articles by Claire Selin 4 Author information Article notes Copyright and License information 1 Child Language Doctoral Program, University of Kansas 2 Center for Childhood Deafness, Language, & Learning, Boys Town National Research Hospital 3 School of Science & Engineering, Tulane University 4 Center for Childhood Deafness, Language, & Learning, Boys Town National Research Hospital ✉ Corresponding Author: Karina Saechao, M.A., CCC-SLP, Ph.D. Student, Child Language Doctoral Program, University of Kansas, [email protected] Roles Karina Saechao : M.A., CCC-SLP , Ph.D. Student Meghan Matuszeski : Research Assistant Yo Jackson : Ph.D., ABPP , Professor Claire Selin : Ph.D., CCC-SLP , Research Scientist I Issue date 2025 Jun. PMC Copyright notice PMCID: PMC13078851 NIHMSID: NIHMS2163845 PMID: 41812676 The publisher's version of this article is available at Semin Speech Lang Abstract Background: Within an ecobehavioral framework, proximal (e.g., activity context) and distal factors (e.g., public policies) may influence how children and caregivers use AAE features. Although prior research has considered isolated factors, considering how these ecological factors interact will improve understanding of the complexity surrounding AAE feature use within caregiver-child interactions. Methods: Thirty language samples were transcribed and coded for AAE features from five-year-olds and their caregiver during a play task. Mixed effects models were estimated to investigate whether speaker (i.e., caregiver, child), activity context (i.e., reading, free play), and language dynamics (e.g., previous AAE use) predicted AAE feature use. Results: The baseline probability of AAE feature use in an utterance was 5.73%, and the probability of AAE feature use: a) increased when the previous utterance included an AAE feature and was spoken by the same speaker or the speaker changed from child-to-caregiver, and b) decreased for the caregiver during the book reading activity. Implications: The results of this study suggest that language dynamics within the caregiver-child interaction influence AAE use. Further, caregivers appeared to “suppress” their use of AAE features during the book reading task, reflecting a shift from using more idealized AAE in free play to more idealized Mainstream American English based on activity context. Keywords: African American English, Caregiver, Child, Play, Reading Introduction Language expression and understanding are linked to and are the result of our racial, ethnic, national, cultural, familial, community, and individual identities ( Beneke & Cheatham, 2015 ). African American English (AAE) has served as a cultural marker and a way to develop a strong identity in Black cultural practices. How we learn and engage with language shapes our educational, societal, and language experiences and how we use language with varying communication partners and across different activity contexts. Decades of research into AAE shows the systematicity and rule-governedness of AAE and that it is spoken by many (but not all) African American & Black people in the United States. Over the years, scholars have defined the linguistic elements of AAE that are contrastive (i.e. unique to AAE) and noncontrastive (i.e. shared between AAE and Mainstream American English 1 [MAE]) (Seymour et al., 1998). In the morphosyntax domain, AAE is distinctly characterized by its optional use of specific morphemes within a set of rules governing the language system ( Green, 2011 ). For example, AAE allows its speakers to null mark the copula (e.g. She ∅ happy.), third person singular (e.g. She like∅ playing ball.), among other morphosyntactic feature markers. Baugh (1983) and Green (2011) assert that as a language system, AAE use can be thought of as a continuum with idealized AAE on one end and idealized MAE on the opposite end. Speakers have different relationships with this continuum. First, speakers of AAE vary in where they are on the continuum. If a person speaks more idealized AAE, they are considered more fluent in AAE and can use it with more comfort and ease across people, activity contexts, and settings. If a person is more toward the idealized MAE side of the continuum, they will use fewer features of AAE and maybe less often (such as within educational institutions). A person who falls in the middle of the continuum would have a more extended range and that person would be able to use many more points on the spectrum in either direction. Thus, a person may fall on a spot along the continuum in terms of their access to and option to use varying AAE feature types, tokens, meanings, sentence patterns, and phonology. Second, regardless of where speakers of AAE fall on the continuum, they can move across the continuum based on a variety of factors including setting (e.g., school versus home), activity context (e.g., literacy-based tasks versus story telling), or person (e.g., peers versus teachers). For example, a speaker may fall on the more idealized AAE end when they are speaking to members of their family and community and more on the idealized MAE end when they are in school. The continuum is discussed to illustrate how AAE speakers adjust their use of AAE based on varying salient social factors (e.g. age, race, region, neighborhood, SES). We hypothesize that, despite their starting point, speakers of AAE will move along the continuum and vary in whether and how much they use AAE based on contextual factors. Using the ecobehavioral model of early language development (Ford et al., 2020), we specifically examine how caregivers and children vary in their AAE use when engaged in two caregiver-child interaction activity contexts: book reading and free play. Theoretical Framework: The Ecobehavioral Model Ford et al. (2020) reviewed and applied the ecobehavioral model to early language development. In their model, the caregiver-child interaction is the primary mechanism for early language acquisition. The model depicts the child-caregiver relationship at the center of a series of nested circles. Around the caregiver interaction, the circles extend out to include the ecological variables of caregiver knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors (e.g., caregiver education/socioeconomic status, culture); environmental components and resource availability (e.g., materials, resources, and experiences available to the dyad); and policy and practices (e.g., educational program quality standards). Further, there is a bidirectional relationship between the circles of the model. For example, the environment can trickle down to influence the caregiver-child interaction, and the child’s behavior can cascade out to influence the caregiver’s language use. Rather than employing a static model that focuses solely on the child’s behavior within a specific setting (e.g., school), the ecobehavioral model is dynamic and encourages researchers to consider how language use may vary based on a variety of ecological factors. As shown in Figure 1 , we have modified Ford et al.’s (2020) ecobehavioral model for our purpose of examining how caregiver-child dyads navigate the AAE continuum. The labels on the top of the circles in Figure 1 come from Ford et al.’s (2020) model, and the labels toward the bottom are how we operationalized the variables for this current study. First, like Ford et al. (2020), we place the caregiver-child dyad in the center of the model, but we also draw attention to the language dynamics within the dyad and how the caregiver and child may influence each other’s use of AAE. Second, we hypothesize that the “goal” of the conversation—or the activity context (Holme, 2023)—will influence how AAE is used within the dyad based on trickle down effects from the nested ecological variables. In Figure 1 , the bidirectional arrow represents the activity contexts—free play and book reading—as a bidirectional link between the dyad and the caregiver’s influence on the interaction. Figure 1. The Ecobehavioral Model and African American English Feature Use in Caregiver-Child Interactions. Open in a new tab Note. This model shows that child-caregiver interactions are nested within a series of proximal and distal ecological variables that are relevant to the dyad’s use of African American English features. The black arrow between “Caregiver Interaction” and “Caregiver Knowledge, Beliefs, and Behaviors” represents the activity context (e.g., book reading, free play). Activity Contexts and AAE Feature Use In any language or dialect, caregivers and children use language variably depending on the activity context surrounding the conversation. Holme et al. (2023) completed a scoping review on how caregiver-child language varies across activity contexts (e.g., reading, play, routines, structured tasks). Consistent with the ecobehavioral model of early language development, language use varied within the dyads based on the contextual factor of activity. For example, the number of utterances, utterance length, lexical diversity, conversational turns, noun to verb phrase proportions, and communicative functions (e.g., action requests during building block play) all varied when comparing book reading to play or between different types of play (e.g., toy, non-toy, role play) across studies. Holme et al. (2023) discuss that culture influences both activity contexts—book reading and play; however, they did not specifically look at AAE use and whether caregivers and children move across the AAE continuum depending on the activity context. Yet, a variety of contextual factors can impact how speakers move across the AAE continuum including setting (e.g. home versus school; (Bacchini et al., 1995), the race of the communication partner (Seymouret al.,1986), socioeconomic status (Washington & Craig, 1994 ), and age and grade ( Thompson et al., 2004 ). For example, AAE features are used with higher frequency at home (Bacchini et al,1995), by males (Washington et al.,1998), by younger children (pre-k - kindergarten when compared to older children; Craig & Washington, 2004 ), and from lower SES backgrounds (Washington & Craig, 1994). Further, activity contexts also impact the frequency of use of AAE features. For example, in young children, more AAE features appear in the more structured task of picture description as compared to less structured tasks like free play (Washington et al., 1998) and conversations (Hendricks et al., 2025). However, whether AAE feature use varies between free play and book reading specifically is not yet known nor whether caregivers also vary in their use of AAE based on activity context. Based on the ecobehavioral model, we expect differences between free play and book reading because book reading is a more structured task than free play and is an academic task. The Impact of Academic Tasks on AAE Use Fewer AAE features are used in literacy contexts compared to spoken language contexts (e.g., spontaneous conversation). Thompson et al. (2004) found that most of the third-grade participants in their study used AAE while reading but produced fewer AAE features as compared to a picture description language expression task. Use of AAE features while reading also greatly decreases in the first grade ( Craig & Washington, 2004 ; Ivy & Masterson, 2011 ). This is consistent with school enrollment as a time in which young children may move along the continuum from more idealized AAE use to more idealized MAE use ( Craig et al., 2014 ). This continuum shift may occur because children spend more time in school—an environmental context that can influence children’s language use based on the ecobehavioral model. Specifically, in the school environment, MAE is the primary and expected language both in conversation and in academic tasks (e.g., written texts, curriculum) ( Cazden, 1999 ). As such, whether and how often AAE speakers skew toward idealized AAE or idealized MAE may be based on the expectation of the task. For example, Schachter and Craig (2013) conducted a study investigating AAE speaking students’ use of AAE features during an oral narrative task. They found that kindergarten and first grade children used AAE features in their oral narratives to advance the story. They also found that particular AAE features (i.e. preterite had, zero past tense, zero preposition, fitna/sposeta/bouta, and double marking features) were used by the children to show complicating actions in the oral narratives. Thus, AAE use played an important role in story telling for these children. Despite children using AAE to share oral narratives, children’s books used in American public schools are primarily written in MAE. Consistent with the ecobehavioral model of early language development, the words written in MAE likely create an explicit expectation that shifts the speaker toward more idealized MAE use during literacy-based activities. Connor and Craig (2006) investigated preschoolers’ use of AAE features across two activity contexts varying in expectation level for MAE. The first task had an explicit expectation to use MAE. The children were asked to imitate sentences with idealized MAE morphosyntactic structures. The second task had an implicit expectation to use MAE. The children were provided a wordless picture book and asked to “read” the book aloud. The expectation is implicit since the physical material of a book and the cue to “read” imply this is a literacy-based task in the absence of explicit cues (e.g., text written in MAE). Fewer preschoolers (27%) used AAE features when the expectation of MAE was explicit in the sentence imitation task as compared to the oral narrative task when the expectation was implicit (87%). Thus, even before entry to kindergarten, preschoolers shift across the AAE continuum toward more idealized MAE when explicit expectations are present in the environment and activity context. The activity context of book reading then creates expectations for the language dynamic between caregivers and children. This can influence their language use and how AAE features are being used during this task. Further, in the current study, the provided book contains written text—an explicit cue to shift toward more idealized MAE since AAE does not have an orthography. Thus, not only may the activity context of reading a book lead to the caregivers and children using fewer features of AAE when compared to activity contexts such as free play, but the book itself (i.e., a material within the environmental components and resource availability variable) and the presence of written words may also influence how each speaker engages in the activity. Because the caregivers have presumably navigated the education system themselves, their prior academic experiences may influence how they shift across the AAE continuum during book reading differently than their young child who has not yet started or has just started school. Alternatively, caregiver-child interactions are dynamic with speakers influencing one another (e.g., coordination of morphosyntactic structures; Dale & Spivey, 2006 ). If the caregiver shifts across the AAE continuum during book reading because of their prior educational experiences and the explicit cues provided in the book, the child may also shift in parallel toward more idealized MAE. Although this has not yet been specifically looked at in the literature for AAE, caregivers’ overall language use does vary based on activity context (Bornstein et al., 1999; Nandy et al, 2021). Further, within the activity context of play interactions, Washington & Craig (2002) found that caregivers and children use AAE both in similar and different ways. For example, almost all caregivers and children used the AAE feature types of unmarked copula, unmarked auxiliary, and subject-verb variation. They also found similar distributions of AAE use between the children and their caregivers, highlighting the familial and community ties within the dyad through language. This was consistent with their earlier work in which they found that those three AAE feature types were the most frequently used forms by AAE speaking children and adults in picture description tasks as well (e.g. Washington et al., 1998; Washington & Craig, 1998 , 2002 ). Washington et al. (1998) found that picture description tasks elicited more AAE use overall with no differences by gender. However, males produced more AAE features than girls during free play. In line with the ecobehavioral model, Washington and colleagues’ studies suggest that the task or activity context one is engaged in, why one is using their language, and what a person is using it for may influence their morphosyntactic choices such as overtly or not overtly marking specific feature types. The Current Study The caregiver plays a pivotal role in the child’s early language experiences, and their influence is important for understanding how AAE speaking children engage with their own language. The purpose of this study is to investigate AAE use in caregiver-child dyads during book reading and free play tasks situated within an ecobehavioral theoretical framework. Prior research suggests that child and caregiver speakers use AAE at different frequencies and may vary based on the activity context. However, to our knowledge, no study has compared a) AAE feature use in play versus book reading activity contexts, b) whether caregivers and children differ in their AAE use across these activity contexts, or c) whether the language dynamics within the caregiver-child interaction influence AAE use (e.g., if caregiver’s use of AAE increases the likelihood of the child using AAE). Yet, we anticipate that AAE use will vary as the caregiver and child may move across the AAE continuum differently based on the activity context and language dynamics. This study addressed the following research questions: 1. Do the language dynamics within the caregiver-child interaction influence AAE use? We hypothesize that previous AAE use will predict AAE use in the current utterance, and that differences may appear based on the direction of speaker change (i.e., caregiver to child, child to caregiver, or no change). 2. Do caregivers and children differ in how their AAE use varies across the activity contexts of book reading and free play? Based on the bioecological model, we expect fewer AAE features in the book reading activity given the centering of MAE in academic contexts. The caregiver and child diverging in this activity context-based shift is also possible. Methods Dataset and Sample Data for this study came from the Preschoolers’ Adjustment and Intergenerational Risk (PAIR) Project. The PAIR Project was a prospective longitudinal study of preschoolers at risk for experiencing adverse childhood events (e.g., maltreatment, violence exposure). The PAIR Project “aimed at understanding how specific characteristics of adversity exposure in children and parents (i.e., chronic, acute), specific systems in the child (i.e., emotion regulation, cognitive skills), and parental responsiveness interact to predict developmental and mental health outcomes in young children” ( Griffith et al., 2020 , p. 3). Data were collected between the years 2016 and 2020 in a large Midwestern metro area. Participants were primarily recruited via community-based organizations and agencies serving low-income communities (e.g., Head Start) and word of mouth. Approximately 20% of participants were recruited from the state department of social services, where the families were receiving mandatory services, but the children were not in foster care. Almost all participants met federal thresholds for living in poverty based on annual income compared to household size; however, the caregivers’ educational levels varied across the sample. Exclusionary criteria for the PAIR project were: 1) caregiver report of a neurodevelopmental disorder (e.g., Autism), or 2) the child’s heritage language not being English. Participants were between the ages of three and five years at timepoint one. The current study is a first report from an ongoing secondary data analysis project where we are transcribing video recordings and conducting language sample analyses of a caregiver-child interaction task from the larger PAIR project. Given the research questions of the current study, we selected 30 dyads from timepoint one based on two criteria: 1) the child was five years old, since this is when children enter kindergarten, and 2) both the child and caregiver were speakers of AAE. Because AAE was not an inclusionary criterion for the larger PAIR project, AAE speaker status was confirmed by the first author, who is an AAE speaker, based on listener judgement ( Oetting & McDonald, 2002 ; Seymour & Ralabate, 1985 ). We then transcribed and coded the video recordings for the selected 30 dyads using the procedures described in later subsections. See Table 1 for sample demographics, which were collected based on parent report. Table 1. Sample demographics (n = 30 dyads) Variable Child Caregiver M (SD) or n (%) M (SD) or (%) Age 5.49 (.25) 32.30 (5.74) Sex (Male) 18 (60%) Race/Ethnicity Latinx/Hispanic 2 (6.67%) Black/African American 22 (73.33%) 28 (90%) Multiracial 7 (23.33%) 2 (10%) Other 1 (3.33%) Maternal Education Some grade school 0 (0%) Some high school 5 (16.67%) High school graduate or GED 7 (23.33%) Trade school or community college graduate 7 (23.33%) Some college 9 (30%) Four-year degree college graduate 2 (6.67%) Paternal Education Some grade school 1 (3.33%) Some high school 9 (30%) High school graduate or GED 11 (36.67%) Trade school or community college graduate 1 (3.33%) Some college 7 (23.33%) Four-year degree college graduate 1 (3.33%) Open in a new tab Procedures The PAIR Project involved multimodal procedures including parent report, behavioral observations, direct assessment, and physiological measurement (e.g., heart rate). Some tasks were administered only to the child participant or only to the caregiver while two behavioral observations included the dyad: 1) the Three-Bag Task ( Brady-Smith et al., 1999 ), which is the focus of the current study, and 2) an experimental stress task for observing emotion regulation and attachment-related behaviors. All tasks were completed in one day, and the procedures were repeated every six months for four total timepoints. See Griffith et al. (2020) for details on the overall PAIR Project data collection procedures. The Three-Bag Task The data used in the current study are from the Three-Bag Task ( Brady-Smith et al., 1999 ), which is a 10-minute, semi-structured, free-play caregiver-child interaction task. For the Three-Bag Task, the data collector provide the caregiver-child dyad with three bags labeled one, two, and three with each containing a different set of toys or activities: 1) Eric Carle’s picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar , 2) toys for pretend play—a Learning Resources ® cash register, money, and food, and 3) LEGO ® DUPLO ® building bricks. The data collectors asked the dyad to play, unobserved but video-recorded, for 10 minutes with the sole instruction of “play with each bag in order.” Thus, they were free to play with each set for as long as they preferred and to play and interact in any manner. Although the Three-Bag Task is common in the developmental literature, we do not know of any study using this method to examine AAE. Language Sample Analysis The language samples were transcribed and segmented into communication units (C-units) based on the Codes for Human Analysis of Transcriptions (CHAT) conventions from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES; MacWhinney, 2014 ). Overall, we followed CHAT conventions for standard transcription procedures. To code for AAE features, we used Craig and Washington’s (2004) feature set (see Tables 2 and 3 ); however, we did not utilize the phonological features since we were only interested in morphosyntax for this paper. Based on the AAE features, we calculated AAE tokens (i.e., total number of AAE features across all types) and AAE feature types (i.e., the number of different AAE features occurring in the sample) for both the participant and caregivers. Using the “gems” CLAN feature, we measured utterances, tokens, types, and each individual AAE feature type for each task (i.e., book reading; free play, which combined the cash register and building bricks activities) and a combined total. Trained research assistants transcribed and coded the language samples, and they were required to exceed 85% inter-rater reliability for utterance segmentation and words via point-to-point agreement. Table 2. Children’s Use of AAE Features Feature Book Free Play Total M SD Min Max M SD Min Max M SD Min Max Number of utterances 31.97 22.77 5 103 68.87 29.62 19 138 50.42 32.13 5 138 AAE features: Total 1.47 1.68 0 7 3.50 3.48 0 14 2.48 2.90 0 14 AAE features: Types 1.17 1.15 0 4 2.07 1.68 0 6 1.62 1.50 0 6 Zero copula/auxiliary 0.57 0.90 0 4 1.47 1.91 0 8 1.02 1.55 0 8 Zero possessive 0.13 0.43 0 2 0.47 1.07 0 5 0.30 0.83 0 5 Zero article 0.27 0.52 0 2 0.27 0.78 0 4 0.27 0.66 0 4 Indefinite article 0.23 0.50 0 2 0.10 0.40 0 2 0.17 0.46 0 2 Subject-verb agreement 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.30 0.70 0 3 0.15 0.52 0 3 Zero plural 0.10 0.40 0 2 0.20 0.48 0 2 0.15 0.44 0 2 Zero modal auxiliary 0.07 0.25 0 1 0.20 0.48 0 2 0.13 0.39 0 2 Multiple negation 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.07 0.25 0 1 0.05 0.22 0 1 Regularized reflexive pronoun 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.10 0.40 0 2 0.05 0.29 0 2 Invariant be 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.07 0.25 0 1 0.03 0.18 0 1 Zero past tense 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.03 0.18 0 1 Ain’t 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.02 0.13 0 1 Double marking 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.02 0.13 0 1 Fitna/sposeta/bouta 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.02 0.13 0 1 Undifferentiated pronoun case 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.02 0.13 0 1 Remote past been 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 Completive done 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 Zero - ing 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 Zero possessive 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 Open in a new tab Table 3. Caregiver’s Use of AAE Features Feature Book Free Play Total M SD Min Max M SD Min Max M SD Min Max Number of utterances 62.23 28.04 16 151 95.13 37.59 19 209 78.68 36.83 16 209 AAE features: Total 1.93 2.35 0 10 7.63 6.97 0 30 4.78 5.90 0 30 AAE features: Types 1.40 1.30 0 5 3.50 2.30 0 10 2.45 2.13 0 10 Zero copula/auxiliary 0.50 1.20 0 5 2.77 2.80 0 13 1.63 2.42 0 13 Zero possessive 0.27 0.64 0 3 0.40 1.07 0 5 0.33 0.88 0 5 Zero article 0.23 0.43 0 1 0.60 1.13 0 5 0.42 0.87 0 5 Indefinite article 0.13 0.35 0 1 0.33 0.66 0 2 0.23 0.53 0 2 Subject-verb agreement 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.90 1.09 0 4 0.45 0.89 0 4 Zero plural 0.17 0.75 0 4 0.87 2.00 0 10 0.52 1.53 0 10 Zero modal auxiliary 0.13 0.43 0 2 0.60 1.07 0 4 0.37 0.84 0 4 Multiple negation 0.07 0.25 0 1 0.33 0.61 0 2 0.20 0.48 0 2 Regularized reflexive pronoun 0.07 0.25 0 1 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.03 0.18 0 1 Invariant be 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.02 0.13 0 1 Zero past tense 0.17 0.59 0 3 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.08 0.42 0 3 Ain’t 0.07 0.25 0 1 0.33 0.96 0 5 0.20 0.71 0 5 Double marking 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.00 0.00 0 0 Fitna/sposeta/bouta 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.20 0.76 0 3 0.12 0.56 0 3 Undifferentiated pronoun case 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.03 0.18 0 1 Remote past been 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.02 0.13 0 1 Completive done 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.02 0.13 0 1 Zero - ing 0.00 0.00 0 0 0.07 0.25 0 1 0.03 0.18 0 1 Zero possessive 0.03 0.18 0 1 0.07 0.25 0 1 0.05 0.22 0 1 Open in a new tab Data Analysis Data were analyzed using R (Version 4.4.2) and the lme4 package to determine the influence of speaker (caregiver versus child), activity context (book reading versus free play), previous AAE use, and utterance-to-utterance speaker change on the likelihood of an AAE feature appearing in a given utterance. To create the dependent variable (yes/no an AAE feature appeared in an utterance) and the lagged variables (i.e., previous AAE use, utterance-to-utterance change), we first imported the CLAN output into R with R code modified from Oppenheimer et al. (2023). This allowed the unit of observation to be the individual utterances rather than the speaker or dyad. Once imported into R, each utterance was categorized as containing zero or at least one AAE feature—the dependent variable. The previous AAE use and utterance-to-utterance speaker change variables were created as lagged variables. The current utterance was coded as 0 if the immediately preceding utterance (regardless of speaker) did not contain an AAE feature and 1 if it did. The current utterance was separately coded as child-to-parent , for example, if the immediately preceding utterance was spoken by the child while the current utterance was spoken by the parent, regardless of whether AAE was used in the previous utterance. The other categories for this variable were parent-to-child, child-to-child, or parent-to-parent. The latter two categories were collapsed into a single “no change” category given the small number of child-to-child utterances, which led to convergence issues in the model. We used logistic mixed effects modeling due to the nested data structure—utterances ( n = 7850) nested within speaker ( n = 60), and speaker nested within dyad ( n = 30). A logit link was used since the dependent variable was a binary yes/no of whether an AAE feature appeared in an utterance. To account for the nested dependencies, a random intercept for speaker nested within dyad was included in the model. This nesting accounted for the shared variance within speakers across utterances (e.g., some speakers produce more or fewer AAE features than others overall) and dyads across speakers (e.g., some dyads produce more or fewer AAE features than others overall). Fixed effects included covariates (i.e., maternal education and child sex) and the predictors of speaker, activity context, AAE use in the previous utterance, and utterance-to-utterance speaker change. Model fit was evaluated via AIC, BIC, and likelihood ratio tests for the random effects structure and odds ratios, 95% confidence intervals, and p-values for fixed effects. For interpretation purposes, predicted probabilities will also be examined. Results Tables 2 and 3 provide descriptives of the participants’ and their caregivers’ use of AAE features by the activity contexts of book reading and free play, respectively. The AAE features in Table 2 are ordered by the children’s frequency of use, and Table 3 is organized in parallel for comparison purposes. To answer the research questions, we used logistic mixed-effects modeling to determine whether the contextual factors of speaker (caregiver versus child), activity context (book reading versus free play), AAE use in the previous utterance, and utterance-to-utterance speaker change would predict the presence of an AAE feature in a spoken utterance. Of the 7580 utterances produced across the 30 dyads, 5.73% (n = 450) included a feature of AAE. The final model included a random intercept for speaker nested within dyad, which had improved model fit over simpler structures (e.g., no random effects, random intercept for speaker only). The intraclass correlation for the speaker random intercept was 0.12, meaning 12% of the variation in AAE feature presence at the utterance-level was attributable to between-speaker differences. Thus, although some speakers used AAE features more than others on average, most variation in AAE feature presence occurred within speakers. For fixed effects, the covariate of child sex was non-significant, suggesting that whether the child or caregiver produced an AAE feature did not differ between the male and female participants (6.31% and 6.50%, respectively). In contrast, maternal education was significantly associated with AAE feature use. Higher levels of maternal education were associated with a lower likelihood of utterances containing AAE features. For example, a child participant with a maternal education of “some high school” had a 9.10% predicted probability of producing an AAE feature in any given utterance compared to 3.39% for “graduate or professional school”. For the predictors, the model included two significant interactions—1) previous AAE use by utterance-to-utterance speaker change and 2) current speaker by activity context . Given the confidence intervals and relatively large standard errors for the previous AAE use by utterance-to-utterance speaker change interactions, we estimated a more parsimonious model without that interaction term. Model fit was significantly worse, −2ΔLL(2) = 9.47, p = .009, so we retained the previous AAE use by utterance-to-utterance speaker change interaction term. To investigate the interactions further, simple effect contrasts were estimated, which are reported below in the corresponding sections. RQ1: Previous AAE use by speaker change interaction When controlling for other variables including the speaker by activity context interaction, the previous AAE use by speaker change interaction was significant, as shown in Table 4 and Figure 2 . The simple main effect of previous AAE use (regardless of the previous speaker) was not statistically significant. The predicted probability of an AAE feature appearing in the current utterance was 5.26% if the prior utterance did not have an AAE feature compared to 10.43% if the prior utterance did have an AAE feature. The simple main effect of previous speaker (regardless of AAE use in the prior utterance) was not significant when comparing a speaker change from child-to-caregiver (5.96%) with no change in speaker (e.g., previous and current speaker are both child or caregiver; 6.73%), but the simple main effect was significant between child-to-caregiver and caregiver-to-child (3.83%). Table 4. Results of Mixed Effects Model of AAE Feature Use in The Three Bag Task Term Estimate Standard Error Statistic p -value 95% CI Intercept −1.91 0.40 −4.73 < .001 [−2.69, −1.12] Sex (male) −0.03 0.22 −0.15 .881 [−0.46, 0.39] Maternal Education −0.22 0.08 −2.69 .007 [−0.37, −0.06] Previous AAE Use 0.42 0.34 1.26 .207 [−0.23, 1.08] Speaker Change: None 0.04 0.13 0.30 .768 [−0.22, 0.30] Speaker Change: Caregiver-to-Child −0.43 0.22 −1.95 .051 [−0.87, 0.00] Task (Book Reading) −0.02 0.19 −0.10 .916 [−0.40, 0.36] Current Speaker (Caregiver) 0.04 0.19 0.22 .824 [−0.34, 0.42] Previous AAE × Speaker Change: None 0.76 0.38 1.97 .049 [0.00, 1.51] Previous AAE × Speaker Change: Caregiver-to-Child −0.46 0.55 −0.84 .403 [−1.53, 0.62] Activity Context × Speaker −0.77 0.24 −3.20 .001 [−1.24, −0.30] Open in a new tab Note. CI = confidence interval; AAE = African American English; reference category is in the parentheses. Figure 2. Predicted Probability of AAE Use Based on Previous AAE Use and Speaker Change. Open in a new tab Note. Predicted probabilities were calculated from a mixed effects model. The interaction between Previous AAE Use (x-axis) and utterance-to-utterance Speaker Change (see legend) is depicted while controlling for covariates and the interaction between speaker and task. AAE = African American English Taken together, when a child or caregiver uses an AAE feature in the prior utterance, they are significantly more likely to use an AAE feature again in the current utterance they are producing. In addition, when the child produces an AAE feature, the caregiver is significantly more likely to produce an AAE feature afterwards. However, the caregiver’s use of AAE in the previous utterance did not associate with an increased likelihood of the child using an AAE feature. RQ2: Current speaker by activity context interaction When controlling for other variables and the significant interaction term from RQ1, the current speaker by activity context interaction was also significant, as shown in Table 4 and Figure 3 . For the simple effect of speaker, children and caregivers did not differ in their use of AAE features during the free play task. However, the child participants were 2.07 times more likely than their caregiver to produce an AAE feature during book reading, p = .03. For the simple effect of activity context, children did not differ in their AAE use between the book reading and free play tasks, but caregivers were 2.21 times less likely to produce an AAE feature in the book reading task as compared to the free play task, p < .001. In all, the caregivers used fewer AAE features when engaged in the book reading task, which the child participants did not. Figure 3. Predicted Probability of AAE Feature Use Based on Task and Speaker. Open in a new tab Note. Predicted probabilities were calculated from a mixed effects model. The interaction between Task (x-axis) and Speaker (see legend) is depicted while controlling for covariates and the interaction between previous AAE use and utterance-to-utterance speaker change. Note. AAE = African American English Discussion The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in how 5-year-old AAE speakers use AAE when compared to their own caregivers across activity contexts—book reading and free play. For the first research question, we hypothesized that previous AAE use would predict AAE use in the current utterance, and that differences may appear based on the direction of speaker change (i.e., caregiver to child, child to caregiver, or no change). Indeed, we found the probability of AAE feature use increased when the previous utterance included an AAE feature. Specifically, there was intra-speaker continuity in that when the speaker did not change, the previous utterance was much more likely to also contain AAE use, as represented in Figure 2 . Additionally, caregivers were more likely to use AAE when the child previously used it, but the reverse—caregiver-to-child speaker change direction—did not occur. Caregivers are some of the child’s first language models, and they share a linguistic community. So, if the child uses AAE, the caregiver is likely to continue using it as they converse within the activity context, reinforcing their choice to shift toward more idealized AAE. Additionally, when the speaker does not change, the previous utterance was more likely to have been in AAE. That is, once a speaker begins using AAE within an activity context, they are likely to continue to use it, at least as far as the next immediate utterance. Although children were not more likely to use an AAE feature immediately after their caregiver did, this does not rule out that caregivers’ use of AAE does not impact whether and to what extent the child uses AAE. Instead, the lag from one utterance to the next may not be the appropriate grain-size for understanding the caregiver’s influence on the child’s AAE use. How the caregiver uses AAE across the entire conversational exchange or over time across multiple conversations may be more important. Yet, the caregiver’s responsiveness in using AAE after the child supports the child’s language development regardless of the child’s uptake of a caregiver’s immediate modeling of an AAE feature. For the second research question, we hypothesized that based on the bioecological model fewer AAE features would be produced in the book reading activity given the centering of MAE in academic contexts. The caregiver and child diverging in this activity-based shift was also possible since the children had not entered or spent much time in kindergarten yet. It was the case that caregivers used AAE less during the reading activity compared to the free play activity thereby using more idealized MAE when reading. On the other hand, the children used similar amounts of AAE regardless of the activity context. Thus, the children used more idealized AAE whether they were reading or participating in free play with their caregivers. In line with prior research (i.e., Washington & Craig, 2002 ), our findings support that preschoolers use AAE features in a similar frequency as their caregiver within the activity context of play. Our finding that caregivers use fewer AAE features in book reading as compared to free play also aligns with developmental trends in the literature. Specifically, that AAE feature use in reading-based tasks decreases after attending school (e.g., Craig et al., 2014 ; Craig & Washington, 2004 ; Ivy & Masterson, 2011 ). However, our overall findings differed somewhat from Connor and Craig’s (2006) study where they found preschoolers used fewer AAE features when the task included explicit expectations for idealized MAE (i.e., sentence imitation) compared to implicit expectations (i.e., a picture book with no written words). In the current study, the book reading task included explicit expectations for idealized MAE—words written on the pages with MAE sentence and morphosyntactic structures. These explicit cues appeared to influence the caregivers’ use of AAE but not the children’s. Given the ages of the children in the current study and their limited reading experience, the written words may not have been explicit enough cues for them. Instead, similar to the wordless picture book in Connor and Craig’s (2006) study, the physical book and the caregiver’s reading of the story with more idealized MAE may have served as implicit cues for the children. This may also explain why caregivers’ use of AAE in a previous utterance did not influence the probability of the child using an AAE feature. The caregivers’ shift toward more idealized MAE is an implicit cue for the child and, based on the results of Connor and Craig (2006) , implicit cues are insufficient to impact preschoolers’ use of AAE features. The Ecobehavioral Model and AAE Feature Use in Caregiver-Child Interactions Within an ecobehavioral theoretical framework, caregivers may be suppressing their use of AAE based on their prior experiences in the MAE-centered educational system. Caregivers have years of experience learning within the school system. Linguistic racism is rampant within these settings as it works to suppress use of AAE ( Privette & Saechao, 2025 ; Saechao et al., 2025 ). In the ecobehavioral model, policies, resources, and educators impact how students engage with academic-adjacent activities including book reading. If the expectation around language use during “academic activities” is to suppress AAE use and utilize more idealized MAE, this may impact how caregivers use AAE with their children across different activity contexts such as book reading and free play. Another interpretation of the parents using less AAE during the reading activity is because books are primarily written in MAE, as was the book included in this study’s Three Bag Task. Consistent with the bioecological model, the materials involved in the activity can influence the caregiver-child interaction and how they use AAE. The book being written in MAE influences how the caregiver and child use language because AAE does not have an orthography. Thus, MAE is represented and reinforced as the language to use while reading, even if implicitly. The most distal circle in the ecobehavioral model involves policy, including laws governing educational and clinical practices. While not directly investigated in the current study, we theorize that these more distal factors (e.g., public policies) cascaded to indirectly influence the caregiver-child interaction and how the dyad used AAE features during the Three-Bag Task. These more distal factors are important to understand because children attend school for a significant proportion, if not most (e.g., before and after school care), of their waking hours in the day where various policies and educational practices shape curriculum selections and interactions with their teachers (who are likely to be White MAE speaking women). The implications include long term shifts in children’s place on the AAE continuum possibly moving them from more idealized AAE to more idealized MAE. Further, these distal factors could impact language use choices even when they are not physically on school campuses, but participating in activities that are reminiscent of school such as book reading with their caregivers. We suspect that the changes in the caregivers’ AAE feature use across the book reading and free play activity contexts in this study could be due to these distal factors accumulating across time. Many African American children speak AAE upon entry into grade school ( Craig & Washington, 1994 ; Washington et al., 1998), and their language use does not match the baseline curriculum materials and language of the classroom ( Craig & Washington, 2002 ). Far too often, AAE is underestimated, mischaracterized, and misunderstood. AAE has historically been characterized as “mutant,” “lazy,” “defective,” and “ungrammatical” ( Rickford, 1997a ). AAE is sometimes viewed as not being a legitimate variety of English ( Burns et al., 2012 ; Mills, 2015 ; Mills et al., 2021 ; Mills & Fox, 2016 ) and not uncommonly referred to as “slang” and thought of as “broken English” ( Rickford, 1997a ). Thus, use of AAE is typically discouraged and sometimes even prohibited within the walls of traditional classrooms in American public schools ( Delpit, 1998 ; Mufwene, 1999 ). In this instance, caregiver’s experiences with their own academic environment as a result of local policy (e.g., curriculum choices; educator practices) could have impacted how they interact with school-adjacent and school-related activities such as book reading by implicitly discouraging the use of AAE. In contrast to their caregivers, children may not have differed in their AAE use between the shared book reading and free play activity contexts in our study because they have not yet been impacted by the policies and practices of school. It makes sense that children would not adjust or change their AAE language use based on activity context since they have not yet been explicitly or implicitly taught to do so. An implication of this for when children go on to attend school is that, statistically speaking, an AAE speaking child’s teacher is not likely to speak AAE and thus they are not hearing their heritage language at school. Clinical Implications The results of our study here indicate that both children and caregivers use more idealized AAE outside of the school setting especially during free play, and the adult caregivers maintain the use of AAE as they age and within their homes and communities. The caregivers’ language and use of AAE features can be leveraged to support the children’s academic progress. Some argue that children speaking AAE as their primary language is a part of the reason AAE speaking children do not perform well in reading tasks in school ( Craig & Washington, 2004 ). Craig & Washington (2004) found that the rate of production of AAE features was strongly and negatively associated with reading achievement in this group. Specifically, higher rates of AAE feature use coincided with lower reading achievement. The effort of school districts as a system has been to teach Black children how to exist in White centric, MAE speaking spaces with minimal value placed toward their primary language of AAE when they are at school. Equal emphasis should be placed on teachers and speech language pathologists to learn about the forms and features of AAE and to better understand AAE and how it is used. Improved knowledge of AAE will foster stronger relationships between educational practitioners and their students’ caregivers and, therefore, improve AAE speaking children’s language learning both in school and at home. School-based speech language pathologists can support Black AAE speaking children and their caregivers by encouraging caregivers to speak AAE at home with their children in the same way that multilingual caregivers are encouraged to use their heritage language(s) at home. Further, to support literacy at home, educational practitioners could encourage caregivers to “go beyond the script” by reading children’s books using their own words and AAE instead of, or in addition to, the words written in MAE provided in the story. Lastly, it is suggested that caregivers incorporate wordless picture books into their home libraries to encourage use of AAE while engaging with literary materials. However, caregivers may benefit from coaching and instruction to use AAE in these activity contexts given the implicit expectation for more idealized MAE in literacy and academic-based activities. Limitations and Future Directions This participant sample was part of a larger study on child adversity exposure. It is possible that the participants’ risk for and experience with adversity may influence their use of AAE; however, if so, we suspect this may occur indirectly through factors such as maternal education. That is, adversity exposure occurs more frequently in low socioeconomic environments, and socioeconomic factors are associated with AAE use, Additionally, most of the participants’ caregivers reported living in poverty. AAE speakers from impoverished backgrounds use AAE more often as compared to their middle and upper-class counterparts. Indeed, we found that maternal education correlated with AAE use. A future direction could involve studying the impact of activity contexts and task materials on AAE feature use across diverse environments including middle and upper socioeconomic environments. Because the primary aim of the PAIR project was focused on adversity and emotion regulation, participants’ language skills were not comprehensively assessed. Thus, we cannot rule out that some proportion of the participants have an undiagnosed speech or language disorder despite the exclusionary criteria of any caregiver report of a neurodevelopmental disorder. Indeed, prior reports of the PAIR project subsamples include elevated levels of symptoms consistent with developmental language disorder (Selin et al., 2023; Selin & Jackson, 2023). However, the proportion of participants in those reports with elevated language disorder symptoms do not differ markedly from documented prevalence rates of youth from low socioeconomic status across the literature. As mentioned in the Discussion section, one reason the caregivers may have used fewer AAE features in the book reading task is because the book was written in MAE. Although this is still consistent with the ecobehavioral model (i.e., materials influencing caregiver-child interactions), disentangling the impact of a suppressive effect due to the words written on the page versus trickle down influences from problematic policies is important as a future direction. Following the results of this study, we will now code utterances as being text-based talk (i.e., reading the words from the page) versus extra-textual talk such as talking about the text, using dialogic reading strategies, or telling the story using the pictures paired with oral narratives rather than reading word for word ( Read et al., 2025 ). Extra-textual talk allows the opportunity for the caregivers and children to use features of AAE even if the book is written in MAE and is, therefore, an important next step in this line of research. Last, the PAIR project is longitudinal. We will be transcribing the Three Bag Task caregiver-child interactions across all timepoints. The children included in this paper are 5 years old at timepoint one, but all participants are between the ages of 5–7 years old by the final timepoint thereby capturing the period of school entry. It is expected that language use will continue to evolve over time, and the children’s use of AAE features may change after school entry. For example, they may use more idealized MAE during book reading at that time in parallel to their caregivers. Conclusion Use of AAE features may be impacted by a combination of both proximal (e.g., activity context) and distal factors (e.g., public policies) as situated within an ecobehavioral framework. In the current study, AAE speaking caregivers and their children differed in their use of AAE across two activity contexts—book reading and free play. Overall, children and their caregivers did not show differences in their AAE use during the free play task. However, caregivers were around two times less likely to use AAE during the reading activity as compared to the child participants. Our findings show that Black AAE speaking children and their caregivers move along the continuum between use of more idealized AAE and more idealized MAE based on activity context and language dynamics (i.e., use of AAE in prior utterance). Clinical implications include a need for speech language pathologists and educators to reexamine their role in supporting Black AAE speakers’ language use at school and encouraging caregivers to use AAE in the home including during academic-related activities like book reading. Learning Outcomes: Readers will be able to. Explain the four rings of the ecobehavioral model and how they apply to AAE feature use within caregiver-child interactions. Describe the relationship between AAE feature use between children and their caregivers based on the language dynamics within the task (e.g., previous AAE use) and the activity context. Summarize how the findings of the study can be applied to speech-language pathologists with respect to their understanding of AAE feature use in children and their caregivers. Acknowledgments Portions of this work were supported by R03HD115826, R01MH079252, and P20GM109023 from the National Institutes of Health. We would like to thank the participants and their families for their time and participation in this study as well as the research staff who transcribed and coded the language samples. Footnotes 1 [1] In this paper, the term Mainstream American English (MAE) is a dialect of English that is used to refer to the form of English that is commonly used and heard in popular mass communications and media and asserted as the language of academic settings across the United States. 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