Open Ended Questions: A Comparison of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Language Use during Play Time

Abstract

Parent level of education makes important contributions to the linguistic development of children (Hoff, 2003). This cross-sectional study focuses on the link between family socioeconomic status (SES) and child-directed speech and aims to investigate how parents' levels of education influence their language use in terms of their question types. Asking children good questions is a critical tool for developing their skills. In particular, open ended questions are believed to be useful for developing children's cognitive skills, as these questions encourage children express and elaborate upon their thinking, and to provide rationales for their thoughts (Lee, Kinzie, & Whittaker, 2012). They usually involve reasoning and judgment (Hargreaves, 1984). In addition to these, open ended questions are found to offer linguistic advantages for children. They help develop children's vocabulary. Since children are expected to think at higher levels when they enter school, open ended questions are important tools in engaging children in cognitively challenging conversations and promoting higher-order thinking in the preschool period. Within this context, this study is an attempt to explore how parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds guide their preschoolers with regard to their question types. Families differing in socioeconomic status were audiotaped in their homes for about 20 minutes while they were playing with their 5-year-old children. Results demonstrated that high SES parents asked more open ended questions and spoke to their children much more than low SES parents. These findings suggest that children of high SES families are introduced with higher-order thinking before school by their parents. Thus, high SES children who start school with better language skills are able to develop better literacy skills.

Caregiver and child question types during a museum interaction

“…At first consideration, it may seem counterintuitive that the more questions an adult asks, the shorter the child utterances and lower their language score. However, this follows previous work showing that children respond with less linguistically complex utterances to closed questions versus open-ended ones ( Harlen, 1999 ; Çakır, 2016 ; Rowe et al, 2017 ). Polar closed-ended questions only require a limited word response, which will then impact the overall mean length of the child’s utterances.…”

“…While this is a distinct learning environment from a museum or the home with a caregiver—with research showing that children behave differently in terms of question asking with their parents than with their teachers ( Fitneva, 2012 )—this body of work lends insight into the types of questions utilized and their impact. Like with caregivers, open-ended question use by teachers in a classroom setting has been linked to improvements in cognitive skills since these questions encourage individuals to verbalize and elaborate upon their responses ( Çakır, 2016 ). Through elaboration, opportunities to use language also increase.…”

Parent-Child Interactions and Use of Technology During Dinnertime in Families with Children Aged 4-6

“…Aile tarafından çocuğa sunulan sözel ifadelerin zenginliği ileriki yıllardaki başarının temelini oluşturmaktadır (Beals, 1997;Beals ve De Temple, 1992;Snow, 1993). Günlük aktiviteler sırasında çocuk ve ebeveynleri arasındaki etkileşimlerin önemi nedeniyle birlikte kitap okuma ya da oyun sırasındaki ebeveyn-çocuk ifadeleri özellikle dil ve erken okuryazarlık becerilerine yönelik araştırmalarda sıklıkla ele alınmaktadır (Akgün ve Yeşilyaprak, 2011;Aram, Fine ve Ziv, 2013;Çakır, 2016;Hindman, Skibbe ve Foster, 2014;Rowe, 2008;Rowe, Alexander Pan ve Ayoub, 2005). Ne var ki çocuğun ebeveynleri tarafından desteklenmesi sadece çocukla doğrudan ilişkili olan bu etkinliklerle sınırlı değildir.…”