Predictors of Variation in Maternal Talk to Children: A Longitudinal Study of Low-Income Families
By Meredith Rowe, B. Pan, C. Ayoub. 2005
158 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Objective. The goals of this study were (1) to examine the extent of variation in amount and lexical diversity of maternal talk to young children within a sample of low-income families, (2) to determine the patterns of change over time in maternal talk during the early childhood years, and (3) to consider specific predictors of variation in maternal communicative input. Design. Low-income mother - child dyads (n = 108) were videotaped at child ages 14, 24, and 36 months during semistructured play in the home. Videotapes were transcribed and analyzed using the conventions of the Child Language Data Exchange System to determine amount (word tokens) and lexical diversity (word types) of maternal talk to children. Background information collected from mothers at study entry served as predictors of variation in communicative input. Individual growth modeling methods were used to analyze data. Results. Mothers varied greatly in the number of tokens and types produced during interaction. Mothers were found to increase in their total amount of talk and diversity of vocabulary as children aged. In addition to child age, maternal education, language and literacy skills, depression, and age helped explain variation in level of maternal talk, but none of the predictors explained variation in growth. Different combinations of predictors explained variation in tokens versus types. Conclusions. Findings highlight the importance of studying specific predictors of parental talk to children, as even in low-income samples large variation in communicative input is evident.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e038ccaa45d632f95acfd53315e46c772c30c53d
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Clinical Psychology
- Meredith Rowe
- Catherine E. Snow
- B. Pan
- Dimitra Hartas
- E. Hoff
- Henderien W. Steenbeek
- P. V. van Geert
In Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Meredith Rowe
- Catherine E. Snow
- B. Pan
- Dimitra Hartas
- J. Singer
- E. Hoff
- Michael J. Kieffer
- Nonie K. Lesaux
In Education
- Meredith Rowe
- Catherine E. Snow
- B. Pan
- Dimitra Hartas
- J. Singer
- E. Hoff
- Michael J. Kieffer
- Daniel J. Bauer
Citations in the corpus
- Maternal correlates of growth in toddler vocabulary production in low-income families. (2005, methodology): “As Singer and Willett (2003) noted, ‘‘The allowance for dependence upon observed outcome data can account for a Maternal Correlates of Growth in Toddler Vocabulary Production 781 multitude of sins, often supporting the credibility of the MAR assumption even when MCAR . . . assumptions seem…”
- Child-directed speech: relation to socioeconomic status, knowledge of child development and child vocabulary skill* (2008, result): “parental verbal facility did not serve as a mediator, despite previous findings showing a relation between parents’ verbal abilities and child-directed speech (Bornstein et al., 1998; Rowe et al., 2005).”
- Families’ social backgrounds matter: socio-economic factors, home learning and young children’s language, literacy and social outcomes (2011, background): “, 2005 ), which can affect the quantity and quality of their verbal interactions with their children (Hoff, 2003 ).”