Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T11:13:28.679Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Do, say, learn: the functions of mothers’ speech to infants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2019

Yana A. KUCHIRKO ,
Jacob L. SCHATZ ,
Katelyn K. FLETCHER  and
Catherine S. TAMIS-LEMONDA
Yana A. KUCHIRKO*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College, USA
Jacob L. SCHATZ
Affiliation:
New York University, USA
Katelyn K. FLETCHER
Affiliation:
New York University, USA
Catherine S. TAMIS-LEMONDA
Affiliation:
New York University, USA
*
*Corresponding author: Brooklyn College, Assistant Professor, Department Psychology, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY12110, USA. Tel: 718-951-6076. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examined the functions of mothers’ speech to infants during two tasks – book-sharing and bead-stringing – in low-income, ethnically diverse families. Mexican, Dominican, and African American mothers and their infants were video-recorded sharing wordless books and toy beads in the home when infants were aged 1;2 and 2;0. Mothers’ utterances were classified into seven categories (labels/descriptions, emotion/state language, attention directives, action directives, prohibitions, questions, and vocal elicitations) which were grouped into three broad language functions: referential language, regulatory language, and vocalization prompts. Mothers’ ethnicity, years of education, years living in the United States, and infant sex and age related to mothers’ language functions. Dominican and Mexican mothers were more likely to use regulatory language than were African American mothers, and African American mothers were more likely to use vocalization prompts than were Latina mothers. Vocalization prompts and referential language increased with mothers’ education and Latina mothers’ years living in the United States. Finally, mothers of boys used more regulatory language than did mothers of girls. Socio-cultural and developmental contexts shape the pragmatics of mothers’ language to infants.

Keywords

language inputcultureparent-infant interactions
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 47 , Special Issue 1: The Influence of Input Quality and Communicative Interaction on Language Development Part 1 , January 2020 , pp. 64 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, S., Kuebli, J., Boyle, P. A., & Fivush, R. (1995). Gender differences in parent–child conversations about past emotions: a longitudinal investigation. Sex Roles, 33(5/6), 309–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aznar, A., & Tenenbaum, H. R. (2015). Gender and age differences in parent–child emotion talk. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 33(1), 148–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bakeman, R., & Adamson, L. B. (1986). Infants’ conventionalized acts: gestures and words with mothers and peers. Infant Behavior and Development, 9, 215–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumwell, L., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Bornstein, M. H. (1997). Maternal verbal sensitivity and child language comprehension. Infant Behavior and Development, 20(2), 247–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benuš, Š. (2013). Cognitive aspects of communicating information with conversational fillers in slovak. In 2013 IEEE 4th International Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications (CogInfoCom) (pp. 271–6). IEEE. Online <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6719255>..>Google Scholar
Bergelson, E., Amatuni, A., Dailey, S., Koorathota, S., & Tor, S. (2019). Day by day, hour by hour: naturalistic language input to infants. Developmental Science, 22(1), e12715.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berry, J., Poortinga, Y., Segall, M., & Dasen, P. (1992). Cross-Cultural Psychology, Research and Applications. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bigelow, A. E., MacLean, K., & Proctor, J. (2004). The role of joint attention in the development of infants’ play with objects. Developmental Science, 7(5). 518–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bornstein, M. H., Haynes, M. O., & Painter, K. M. (1998). Sources of child vocabulary competence: a multivariate model. Journal of Child Language, 25(2), 367–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Heslington, M., Gini, M., Suwalsky, J. T., Venuti, P., … & Zingman de Galperín, C. (2008). Mother–child emotional availability in ecological perspective: three countries, two regions, two genders. Developmental Psychology, 44(3), 666–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bruner, J. S. (1981). The social context of language acquisition. Language & Communication, 1(2/3), 155–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J. (1996). What we have learned about early learning. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 4(1), 5–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butterworth, G., & Cochran, E. (1980). Towards a mechanism of joint attention in human infancy. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 19, 253–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butterworth, G., & Jarrett, N. (1991). What minds have in common is space: spatial mechanisms serving joint visual attention in infancy. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9(1), 55–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calzada, E. J., Fernandez, Y., & Cortes, D. E. (2010). Incorporating the cultural value of respeto into a framework of Latino parenting. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 16(1), 77–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K., Tomasello, M., Butterworth, G., & Moore, C. (1998). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, i–174.Google Scholar
Caspe, M., & Melzi, G. (2008). Cultural variations in mother–child narrative discourse style. In McCabe, A., Bailey, A. L., & Melzi, G. (Eds.), Spanish-language narration and literacy: culture, cognition, and emotion (pp. 6–33). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clearfield, M. W., & Nelson, N. M. (2006). Sex differences in mothers' speech and play behavior with 6-, 9-, and 14-month-old infants. Sex Roles, 54(1/2), 127–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deák, G. O., Walden, T. A., Kaiser, M. Y., & Lewis, A. (2008). Driven from distraction: how infants respond to parents’ attempts to elicit and re-direct their attention. Infant Behavior and Development, 31(1), 34–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Endendijk, J. J., Groeneveld, M. G., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Mesman, J. (2016). Gender-differentiated parenting revisited: meta-analysis reveals very few differences in parental control of boys and girls. PLoS One, 11(7), e0159193.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A., Perfors, A., & Marchman, V. A. (2006). Picking up speed in understanding: speech processing efficiency and vocabulary growth across the 2nd year. Developmental Psychology, 42(1), 98–116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fivush, R. (1989). Exploring sex differences in the emotional content of mother–child conversations about the past. Sex Roles, 20(11/12), 675–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golombok, S., Fivush, R., & Fivush, G. (1994). Gender development. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haden, C. A., & Fivush, R. (1996). Contextual variation in maternal conservational styles. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 42(2), 200–27.Google Scholar
Halgunseth, L. C., Ispa, J. M., & Rudy, D. (2006). Parental control in Latino families: an integrated review of the literature. Child Development, 77(5), 1282–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes.Google Scholar
Harwood, R. L., Miller, J. G., & Irizarry, N. L. (1997). Culture and attachment: perceptions of the child in context: New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Harwood, R. L., Schölmerich, A., & Schulze, P. A. (2000). Homogeneity and heterogeneity in cultural belief systems. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 87, 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, T. L., & Baker, B. L. (2000). Maternal negativity and children's externalizing behavior. Early Education and Development, 11(4), 483–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., Owen, M. T., Golinkoff, R. M., Pace, A., Yust, P. K. S., & Suma, K. (2015). The contribution of early communication quality to low-income children's language success. Psychological Science, 26(7), 1071–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child Development, 74(5), 1368–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review, 26(1), 55–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E. (2010). Context effects on young children's language use: the influence of conversational setting and partner. First Language, 30(3/4), 461–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E., & Naigles, L. (2002). How children use input to acquire a lexicon. Child Development, 73(2), 418–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1986). Function and structure in maternal speech: their relation to the child's development of syntax. Developmental Psychology, 22(2), 155–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1991). Mother–child conversation in different social classes and communicative settings. Child Development, 62(4), 782–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hurtado, N., Marchman, V. A., & Fernald, A. (2008). Does input influence uptake? Links between maternal talk, processing speed and vocabulary size in Spanish-learning children. Developmental Science, 11(6), F31–F39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M., Waterfall, H. R., Vevea, J. L., & Hedges, L. V. (2007). The varieties of speech to young children. Developmental Psychology, 43(5), 1062–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huttenlocher, J., Waterfall, H. R., Vasilyeva, M., Vevea, J., & Hedges, L. V. (2010). Sources of variability in children's language growth. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 343–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kärtner, J., Keller, H., Lamm, B., Abels, M., Yovsi, R. D., Chaudhary, N., & Su, Y. (2008). Similarities and differences in contingency experiences of 3-month-olds across sociocultural contexts. Infant Behavior and Development, 31(3), 488–500.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kärtner, J., Keller, H., & Yovsi, R. D. (2010). Mother–infant interaction during the first 3 months: the emergence of culture-specific contingency patterns. Child Development, 81(2), 540–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keller, H. (2013). Cultures of infancy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Kuchirko, Y., Tafuro, L., & Tamis LeMonda, C. S. (2018). Becoming a communicative partner: infant contingent responsiveness to maternal language and gestures. Infancy, 23(4), 558–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuchirko, Y., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Luo, R., & Liang, E. (2016). ‘What happened next?’ Developmental changes in mothers’ questions to children. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 16(4), 498–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leaper, C., Anderson, K. J., & Sanders, P. (1998). Moderators of gender effects on parents' talk to their children: a meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology, 34(1), 3–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
López, A., Correa-Chávez, M., Rogoff, B., & Gutiérrez, K. (2010). Attention to instruction directed to another by US Mexican-heritage children of varying cultural backgrounds. Developmental Psychology, 46(3), 593–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
López, A., Ruvalcaba, O., & Rogoff, B. (2015). Attentive helping as a cultural practice of Mexican-heritage families. In Caldera, Y. M. & Lindsey, E. (Eds.), Mexican American children and families, (pp. 96–111). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Luo, R., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2017). Reciprocity between maternal questions and child contributions during book-sharing. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 38, 71–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mangold, P. (2010). INTERACT quick start manual V2.4. Online <www.mangold-international.com>..>Google Scholar
Marchman, V. A., & Fernald, A. (2008). Speed of word recognition and vocabulary knowledge in infancy predict cognitive and language outcomes in later childhood. Developmental Science, 11(3), F9–F16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Masur, E. F. (1987). Imitative interchanges in a social context: mother–infant matching behavior at the beginning of the second year. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 33(4), 453–72.Google Scholar
Masur, E. F., Flynn, V., & Eichorst, D. L. (2005). Maternal responsive and directive behaviours and utterances as predictors of children's lexical development. Journal of Child Language, 32(1), 63–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Melzi, G., & Fernández, C. (2004). Talking about past emotions: conversations between Peruvian mothers and their preschool children. Sex Roles, 50(9/10), 641–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messer, D. J. (1978). The integration of mothers’ referential speech with joint play. Child Development, 49(3), 781–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mol, S. E., Bus, A. G., de Jong, M. T., & Smeets, D. J. (2008). Added value of dialogic parent–child book readings: a meta-analysis. Early Education and Development, 19(1), 7–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montag, J. L., Jones, M. N., & Smith, L. B. (2015). The words children hear: picture books and the statistics for language learning. Psychological Science, 26(9), 1489–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olson, J., & Masur, E. F. (2015). Mothers’ labeling responses to infants' gestures predict vocabulary outcomes. Journal of Child Language, 42(6), 1289–311.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paavola, L., Kunnari, S., Moilanen, I., & Lehtihalmes, M. (2005). The functions of maternal verbal responses to prelinguistic infants as predictors of early communicative and linguistic development. First Language, 25(2), 173–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parish-Morris, J., Mahajan, N., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., & Collins, M. F. (2013). Once upon a time: parent–child dialogue and storybook reading in the electronic era. Mind, Brain, and Education, 7(3), 200–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogoff, B. (2014). Learning by observing and pitching in to family and community endeavors: an orientation. Human Development, 57(2/3), 69–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogoff, B., Mistry, J., Göncü, A., Mosier, C., Chavajay, P., & Heath, S. B. (1993). Guided participation in cultural activity by toddlers and caregivers. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child development, i–179.Google Scholar
Rondal, J. A. (1980). Fathers' and mothers' speech in early language development. Journal of Child Language, 7(2), 353–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, M. L. (2012). A longitudinal investigation of the role of quantity and quality of child-directed speech in vocabulary development. Child Development, 83(5), 1762–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rowe, M. L. (2018). Understanding socioeconomic differences in parents’ speech to children. Child Development Perspectives, 12(2), 122–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, M. L., Leech, K. A., & Cabrera, N. (2017). Going beyond input quantity: wh-questions matter for toddlers' language and cognitive development. Cognitive Science, 41, 162–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schieffelin, B. B., & Ochs, E. (Eds.) (1986). Language socialization across cultures (No. 3). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shneidman, L., Gaskins, S., & Woodward, A. (2016). Child-directed teaching and social learning at 18 months of age: evidence from Yucatec Mayan and US infants. Developmental Science, 19(3), 372–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shneidman, L. A., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: How important is directed speech? Developmental Science, 15(5), 659–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva, K. G., Correa-Chávez, M., & Rogoff, B. (2010). Mexican-heritage children's attention and learning from interactions directed to others. Child Development, 81(3), 898–912.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E., Arlman-Rupp, A., Hassing, Y., Jobse, J., Joosten, J., & Vorster, J. (1976). Mothers' speech in three social classes. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 5(1), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soderstrom, M., & Wittebolle, K. (2013). When do caregivers talk? The influences of activity and time of day on caregiver speech and child vocalizations in two childcare environments. PLoS ONE, 8(11): e80646.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strasser, K., Larrain, A., & Lissi, M. R. (2013). Effects of storybook reading style on comprehension: the role of word elaboration and coherence questions. Early Education and Development, 24(5), 616–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Custode, S., Kuchirko, Y., Escobar, K., & Lo, T. (2018). Routine language: speech directed to infants during home activities. Child Development. doi:10.1111/cdev.13089Google ScholarPubMed
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Kuchirko, Y., Luo, R., Escobar, K., & Bornstein, M. H. (2017). Power in methods: language to infants in structured and naturalistic contexts. Developmental Science, 20(6), e12456.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Kuchirko, Y., & Song, L. (2014). Why is infant language learning facilitated by parental responsiveness? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(2), 121–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Kuchirko, Y., & Tafuro, L. (2013). From action to interaction: infant object exploration and mothers' contingent responsiveness. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 5(3), 202–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Schatz, J. (in press). Learning language in the context of play. In Horst, J., von Koss, J., & Torkildsen, K. (Eds.), International handbook of language development. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tamis‐LeMonda, C. S., & Song, L. (2012). Parent–infant communicative interactions in cultural context. Handbook of psychology (2nd ed.). Wiley Online Library: doi.org/10.1002/9781118133880.hop206006Google Scholar
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Song, L., Leavell, A. S., Kahana-Kalman, R., & Yoshikawa, H. (2012). Ethnic differences in mother–infant language and gestural communications are associated with specific skills in infants. Developmental Science, 15(3), 384–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tardif, T., Gelman, S. A., & Xu, F. (1999). Putting the ‘noun bias’ in context: a comparison of English and Mandarin. Child Development, 70(3), 620–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Z. E., Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., & Widaman, K. F. (2013). Longitudinal relations of intrusive parenting and effortful control to ego-resiliency during early childhood. Child Development, 84(4), 1145–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M., & Farrar, M. J. (1986). Joint attention and early language. Child Development, 57, 1454–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vallotton, C. D., Mastergeorge, A., Foster, T., Decker, K. B., & Ayoub, C. (2017). Parenting supports for early vocabulary development: specific effects of sensitivity and stimulation through infancy. Infancy, 22(1), 78–107.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weisleder, A., & Fernald, A. (2013). Talking to children matters: early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2143–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
West, K. L., & Iverson, J. M. (2017). Language learning is hands-on: exploring links between infants’ object manipulation and verbal input. Cognitive Development, 43, 190–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehurst, G. J., Falco, F. L., Lonigan, C. J., Fischel, J. E., DeBaryshe, B. D., Valdez-Menchaca, M. C., & Caulfield, M. (1988). Accelerating language development through picture book reading. Developmental Psychology, 24(4), 552–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, Z., & Gros-Louis, J. (2015). Caregivers provide more labeling responses to infants' pointing than to infants' object-directed vocalizations. Journal of Child Language, 42(3), 538–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed