Maternal Question Use Relates to Syntactic Skills in 5- to 7-Year-Old Children

Abstract

Purpose: This study examined how mothers' question-asking behavior relates to their child's syntactic skills. One important aspect of maternal question-asking behavior is the use of complex questions when speaking with children. These questions can differ based on both their purpose and structure. The purpose may be to seek out information, to teach, or to get a simple yes/no response. Questions may even be rhetorical, with no answer intended at all. Structurally, questions can include a wh -word ( who , what , when , where , why , and how ) or not; however, these wh -questions are important because they elicit utterances from the child and support vocabulary development. Despite wh -questions eliciting a response from children, it remains unknown how these questions relate to children's syntactic skills. Method: Thirty-four mother–child dyads participated in a 15-min seminaturalistic play session. Children were between the ages of 5 and 7 years ( M = 6.26 years, SD = 1.04 years; 20 girls/14 boys). The Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV) assessment was used to measure syntactic skills in children. Using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts, questions were categorized based on structure ( wh -questions vs. non– wh -questions) and purpose (information-seeking, pedagogical, or yes/no and rhetorical questions). A repeated-measures analysis of covariance and a linear regression model were implemented to address the frequency of different questions asked by mothers, as well as what types of questions are most related to children's concurrent syntactic skills. Results: When controlling for total maternal utterances, results revealed that non– wh -questions and rhetorical/yes and no questions were the most frequent types of questions produced by mothers, in terms of structure and purpose, respectively. However, wh -questions were predominantly information-seeking questions. This is important, as the use of information-seeking wh -questions was positively associated with children's syntactic skills, as measured by the DELV, and resulted in children producing longer utterances in response to these questions, as determined by child mean length of utterance in words. Conclusion: Taken together, these findings suggest maternal use of wh -questions aids syntactic skills in children ages 5–7 years, likely because they require a more syntactically complex response on the child's behalf. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27276891