Style and stability in mother conversational behaviour: a study of individual differences

Abstract

This paper explores differences in conversational style among mothers. Although previous research suggests that many aspects of mother speech to the child covary in a way which serves the underlying intention of the mother, it was unclear whether such clusters of conversational behaviour would prove useful in characterizing stylistic differences among mothers across time. An analysis of the functionally-coded speech of 11 mothers showed statistically significant variability among mothers, especially in those behaviours most closely associated with intention. Further, mothers showed stability in these behaviour patterns across two sessions. A typology of mother style, based on the intentions of mothers to direct or converse with their children, is suggested and illustrated by individual cases.

Parent-Child Interaction in Three Conversational Contexts: Variations in Style and Strategy

“…Parents' conversational style during toy play is often contrasted with their conversational style in other contexts (Olsen-Fulero, 1982;Yoder and Kaiser, 1989). For example, Hoff-Ginsberg (1991) contrasted the contexts of dressing, feeding, book reading, and play, finding that toy play had the highest rate of behavior directives and the lowest rate of conversationeliciting utterances from mothers.…”

“…The kind of conversational interaction that promotes children' s participation in conversations and complexity in their expressions has been called a conversation-eliciting style of interaction (Olsen-Fulero, 1982;Yoder and Kaiser, 1989). In such a style parents stay on the child' s topic, elaborate and expand on the child' s utterances, ask questions, and encourage the child' s participation in the conversation.…”

A Study of Multimodal Motherese: The Role of Temporal Synchrony between Verbal Labels and Gestures

“…Further, the results of some observational studies are consistent with the view that mothers (and other adults) adapt their verbal and gestural communication in a manner that would facilitate lexical learning in infants. For example, when adults named objects and actions on which infants were focused, rather than those outside their focus, infants learned words rapidly (Akhtar, Dunham, & Dunham, 1991;Olsen-Fulero, 1982;Tamis-Lemonda & Bornstein, 1989). However, other studies have reported that mothers often name objects and actions outside infants' immediate attentional focus (Collis, 1977;Harris, Jones, & Grant, 1983).…”

Maternal linguistic input to normal and expressive language delayed toddlers

“…The existence of a unique set of speech modifications termed Motherese (Olsen-Fulero, 1982) is well documented in the research literature (Gleitman, Newport & Gleitman, 1984;Furrow, Nelson & Benedict, 1979;Tiegerman, 1984;ContiRamsden, 1985). Mothers use Motherese when they are talking to young children, usually in their first two years of life (Owens, 1984).…”