Educators’, children’s and mothers’ use of temporal language in reminiscing and future talk conversations

We investigated how educators, mothers and children used temporal language in reminiscing and future talk conversations. Participants initially included 40 educator-younger child dyads (27–36 months) and 45 educator-older child dyads (48–60 months) from early childhood centres in Sydney, Australia. Educators were asked to nominate and discuss four past and future events with the participating children. To determine how conversations about different events might vary, temporal focus (past/future) and event novelty (novel/familiar) were manipulated. To enable comparisons between educator–child and mother–child use of temporal language 42 mother–child dyads also completed the same tasks. Educators were noted to use timeless present references to add new information about events. With the older children, educators made significantly more future action and future hypothetical references. Educators’ use of future hypothetical references was significantly greater than that of mothers. Educators used reminiscing and future talk conversations to extend children’s exposure to temporal language.