Verbal interaction in families of normal and expressive-language-delayed children.

Abstract

Developmental expressive language disorder (ELD) is a condition characterized by a delay in the development of expressive language compared with receptive language and IQ. Conditions that might contribute to the origins or maintenance of ELD are poorly understood. Unusual verbal interactions between parents and ELD children might be implicated in the origins of ELD or might represent parental reactivity to the child's limited expressive skills. We compared verbal interactions in the homes of 28-month-old ELD children, 28-month-old normal children matched on receptive ability with the ELD children, and 17-month-old normal children matched on expressive ability with the ELD children. We analyzed frequencies of major pragmatic categories of parent and child verbal behavior as well as sequential relations involving those categories. Pragmatic interactions in the ELD families were substantially similar to those in the families of the normal younger children and different from those in the older normal children. A measure of the structural complexity of maternal speech (MLU) did not differ across the groups. These results indicate that pragmatic language interactions in the families of ELD children are determined largely by the children's level of expressive ability rather than by their age or receptive abilities. In this regard, the child directed speech of parents of ELD children cannot be considered deviant and cannot be implicated in the etiology of ELD. The sensitivity of parents to their child's level of expressive ability suggests the need for refinement in current hypotheses concerning child directed speech.

Discussing stories: On how a dialogic reading intervention improves kindergartners’ oral narrative construction

“…Read Together, Talk Together is a dialogic reading kit that was designed on the research conducted by Whitehurst and colleagues Whitehurst et al, 1988). It includes colorfully illustrated children's books appropriate for the age level of 4 or 5 years.…”

“…That study, however, did not assess the quality of the parent-child interactions during shared reading. Investigation of the natural reading behaviors of parents with their preschoolers found that parents do not typically engage in interactive reading with their children (Whitehurst et al, 1988). In fact, parents' reading styles typically include few dialogues, and these dialogues involve mainly yes/no questions or directives.…”

“…Recognizing that a more active role in storybook reading may be beneficial to children's literacy development, Whitehurst et al (1988) designed an intervention called dialogic reading that is meant to encourage adults to create dialogues during story time (see Mol, Bus, de Jong, & Smeets, 2008, for an up-to-date meta-analysis of the dialogic reading literature). During reading sessions, the adult reader is required to encourage children's oral contributions using elaborative ''wh-" and open-ended questions, repetition of good responses, and expansion of incomplete responses to illustrate the difference between what was said and what could have been said.…”

Talking About the Non-Literal: Internal States and Explanations in Child-Constructed Narratives

“…In some studies, interventions consisted in training sessions repeated frequently over a relatively long period of time (Lever & Sénéchal, 2011;Peterson, Jesso & McCabe, 1999;Whitehurst et al, 1988), while in others the intervention involved one short session in which children were questioned about the causes of the story events and/or the internal state of the characters (Eaton, Collis, & Lewis, 1999;Shiro, 2003;Silva, Strasser & Cain, 2014;Veneziano & Hudelot, 2006Veneziano, 2016). In some studies, the narratives obtained were conversationally co-constructed between the child and the experimenter (e.g.…”

Mother Child Synchrony and Communicative Reciprocity in Late-Talking Toddlers

“…Few studies have examined mothers and late-talking children in the 2-to 3-year age range, and only one such study has limited the sample to children who are receptively normal (Whitehurst et al, 1988). In that study, data were collected during the family dinner hour, and only the communicative behavior of the parents was examined in any depth.…”