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Communication patterns between parents and children: Comparing mothers and fathers in different learner contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2014

LARA PIERCE ,
FRED GENESEE ,
KARINE GAUTHIER  and
MARIE-EVE DUBOIS
LARA PIERCE*
Affiliation:
McGill University
FRED GENESEE
Affiliation:
McGill University
KARINE GAUTHIER
Affiliation:
Montreal Children's Hospital
MARIE-EVE DUBOIS
Affiliation:
Concordia University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Lara Pierce, Department of Psychology, McGill University, 1205 Avenue Docteur-Penfield, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Language use and joint attention (JA) strategies were examined during interactions between francophone mothers and fathers and either their birth children (n = 10) or their internationally adopted children from China (n = 8), once when the children were 15 months old and again at 20 months, on average. Results showed that mothers engaged in more JA episodes and tended to talk more with their children than did fathers; however, this was influenced by the language-learning situation of the child. Specifically, the adoptive parents engaged more with their children than did the birth parents, and the behaviors of the internationally adopted mothers and fathers were more similar to each other than to those of the birth parents, arguably to support their children's unique language-learning situation. However, in contrast to a previous study that examined JA with adoptive mothers, the adoptive fathers’ interaction styles with their children at 15 months were not related to children's vocabularies at 20 months as has been observed for mothers.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 5 , September 2015 , pp. 1223 - 1246
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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