Topic relations in mother-child conversation

Abstract

The present paper describes developmental changes in the topic relations in mother-child conversation. The data base consisted of five videotaped records of 45-minute sessions of mother-child play. The subjects were three dyads observed once when the children were 1;7, 2;2, and 2;8. The younger two children were observed a second time, six months later. In cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons of the dyads, it was observed that the more linguistically advanced children initiated a greater proportion of conversational topics and also elicited more topic-continuing replies from their mothers. In addition, child responsiveness to maternal speech was greatest when maternal speech continued the topic of the child's prior utterance. The results suggest children's conversational skills influence their own language-learning experiences. Implications for accounts of environmental contributions to language acquisition are discussed. Within the field of child language, there is a certain tension between two orientations to the topic of study. Those who seek to account for the acquisition of syntax have generally found little evidence which convinces them of substantive environmental contributions to that achievement, and they have accordingly proposed highly nativist theories (cf. Wexler & Cullicover 1980, Pinker 1984. In contrast, those who have focused their research on early social interaction argue that the environment provides rich support for language development, but their arguments typically do not include accounts of syntax acquisition (cf. Kuczaj 1986).

Middle- and Working-Class Black and White Children's Speech During a Picture-Labeling Task

“…The parent and child have a mutual influence. Support for this view was obtained by Hoff-Ginsberg ( 1987), who found an inverse relationship between adult conversational control and child linguistic competence. Parents initiated most of the topics of conversation with a relatively incompetent speaker, but the balance of control shifted as the child became a more competent speaker.…”

“…There are also differences among groups of parents. Middle-class and White parents talk more, have longer utterances, label more, and provide more information about objects, whereas working-class and Black parents direct the child's behavior more (Hart & Risley, 1992;Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991;Lawrence & Shipley, 1996;Ninio, 1980;Snow et al, 1976). Implicit in many of the studies of how parents speak to children is an assumption that many of the differences in parental input have consequences for the child; that is, that there will be group and/or individual differences among children in their language acquisition.…”

The Specificity of Environmental Influence: Socioeconomic Status Affects Early Vocabulary Development Via Maternal Speech

“…This measure was calculated on the toy play interaction only because in the other settings both parties were not always in view of the camera at the same time. Topic-continuing replies were defined following Hoff-Ginsberg (1987) as utterances that immediately followed a child utterance and that referred to an entity or event that was referred to in the child's prior utterance. The correlation between two coders' estimates of time in joint attention on 6 independently coded videotapes was r(4) 5 .98, the interrater agreement rate for the code that included topiccontinuing replies was 87%, with a kappa of .80, based on codings of 220 utterances from two different transcripts.…”

The Impact of Visual Communication on the Intersubjective Development of Early Parent-Child Interaction With 18- to 24-Month-Old Deaf Toddlers

“…The interaction moment is characterized by topic continuity. The topic of each interaction turn is referred to in any part of the prior turn (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1987) Child: Points to cow ''Milk.'' 3.…”