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MOTHER-CHILD LANGUAGE AT 14 AND 24 MONTHS: CONCURRENT AND LAGGED ASSOCIATIONS
Elizabeth Spier, Catherine S. Tamis-Lemonda and Mark
Spellmann
New York University
Barbara Alexander Pan And Meredith Rowe
Harvard Graduate School of Education
The quality and quantity of caregivers’ language is one of the most powerful predictors of children’s early language and cognitive development. It is no wonder that a fundamental goal of many Early Head Start practitioners is to encourage parents to engage in frequent verbal discourse with their children, and to do so in ways that are sensitive to children’s emergent language, for example by asking questions that elicit children’s own verbal participation (e.g., “What is that?” “Where is the cup?”). Importantly, parenting often mediates the impact of early interventions (as also demonstrated in this EHS report), and parents’ verbal input accounts for much of the variation linking poverty to compromised child outcomes (e.g., Hart & Risley, 1995). Given the importance of parents’ language for children’s language and cognition, researchers at New York and Harvard Universities have focused on the amount and diversity of language to which young children are exposed during the period of 14 to 24 months. In this study, transcript data from the two local sites were merged and associations between mothers’ language and children’s language and developmental status (i.e., Bayley MDI) were explored.
One hundred and forty-six mother-child dyads participating in the research at the New York and Vermont sites, from both treatment and control groups, comprised the sample. Forty-eight percent of participants identified themselves as White, 25 percent as African American, 17 percent as Latina, and 10 percent reflected a combination of other groups (West Indian; Asian; mixed ethnicity). All parents spoke English with their children.
The semi-structured 3-bag task from the national protocol was the basis of mother and child language at both 14 and 24 months. Each videotaped play session was transcribed, and CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System; MacWhinney and Snow, 1985) was used to calculate the total number of words (i.e., tokens) and different words (i.e., types) expressed by each mother and child at each age. In addition, the total number of “wh” questions that mothers directed to their children was calculated. Children’s Bayley MDI performance and data from the MacArthur CDI were included in analyses.
Findings revealed that mothers and children varied dramatically in their number of word types and word tokens, although children, expectedly, were quite limited in their language at 14 months. At 14 months, the mean Bayley MDI for the sample was 95.8 (SD = 11.2). These scores dropped to a mean of 88.5 (SD = 13.7) by 24 months. On the MacArthur CDI, mothers reported that their 14-month olds comprehended a mean of 49.3 words (SD = 19.60) and produced a mean of 12.2 words (SD = 13.0). At 24 months, children produced a mean of 60.1 words (SD = 22.7) and averaged 9.3 (SD = 8.23) on sentence complexity.
At 14 months, all aspects of maternal language predicted most of the child measures (see Table 1). Specifically, maternal word types, tokens and “wh” questions were consistently associated with children’s comprehension and production on the MacArthur, Bayley MDI scores, and the Bayley Language factor. Maternal word types correlated with children’s types and tokens, albeit weakly. At 24 months, maternal language measures were associated with every measure in children with the exception of tokens (see Table 2). Although these associations are concurrent in nature, thereby barring causal interpretations, lagged correlations suggest that mothers’ earlier language predicts children’s language and developmental status over time (see Table 3).
| Child Types |
Child Tokens |
MacArthur Comprehension |
MacArthur Production |
Bayley MDI | Bayley Language Factor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mother Types | .17* | .20** | .32*** | .20** | .21** | .35*** |
| Mother Tokens | 0.09 | 0.14 | .34*** | .19* | .22** | .34*** |
| "Wh" questions | 0.01 | -0.06 | .25** | .21** | .21** | .31*** |
| * p < .05 level; ** p < 0.01 level ; *** p < .001 |
| Child Types |
Child Tokens |
MacArthur Comprehension |
MacArthur Production |
Bayley MDI | Bayley Language Factor |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mother Types | .19* | 0.06 | .36*** | .32*** | .31*** | .26** |
| Mother Tokens | .22* | 0.14 | .36*** | .31*** | .26** | .20* |
| "Wh" questions | .18* | 0.14 | .33*** | .25*** | .32*** | .24* |
| * p < .05 level; ** p < 0.01 level ; *** p < .001 |
| Types | Tokens | MacArthur Comprehension |
MacArthur Production |
Bayley | Bayley Language MDI Factor |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mother Types | .21** | 0.11 | .30** | .30** | .30*** | .30*** |
| Mother Tokens | .20** | 0.09 | .30** | .31*** | .32*** | .27** |
| "Wh" questions | 0.12 | 0.06 | .25** | .26** | .31*** | .29** |
| * p < .05 level; ** p < 0.01 level ; *** p < .001 |
To explore these lagged associations further, a set of simultaneous regressions were conducted in which the joint contributions of child and mother at 14 months were examined in relation to each child and mother outcome separately at 24 months (see Table 4). Because measures of language within mothers and within children covaried at both ages, particularly types and tokens (rs = .91 and .87 in mothers and .89 and .88 in children, at 14 and 24 months respectively), regressions included only one child and one mother language measure in predictive equations.
As can be seen in the top half of Table 4, for the most part, mothers and children both contributed unique variance to children’s language and cognitive outcomes at 24 months. However, children’s 14-month language did not predict mothers’ later language over and above mothers’ own stability (see Table 4). Mothers were highly stable in their language over time. Indeed, the strongest predictor of 24-month maternal language was mothers’ earlier language. Children were also stable (in terms of the rank order of individual differences) in their developmental status and language, even in the context of enormous growth in their language competencies over the one-year period.
Together, these findings indicate that mothers’ language at the onset of children’s language acquisition (here 14 months), is beginning to make a substantial difference in children’s emergent cognitive and linguistic abilities. This observation, coupled with the finding that mothers and children are stable in their language across the second year, suggests the importance of encouraging mothers to talk to and ask questions of their children from a very early stage. Parents should be encouraged to regard children as active communicative participants well before they begin speaking with regularity. The stability evidenced in children’s language and cognitive performance already by 14 months, albeit in the context of their limited proficiency, suggests that mothers’ language has already begun to affect children’s emerging language in children’s first year, underscoring the importance of this foundational period of learning.
| Dependent Measure | 14-Month Predictors | Beta | t-value | Total R(2) | F |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Child 24-Month Language | |||||
| Types | Mom Types | 0.17 | 2.17* | 0.11 | 9.62*** |
| Child Types | 0.26 | 3.39*** | |||
| Tokens | Mom Tokens | 0.06 | 0.7 | 0.09 | 7.36*** |
| Child Tokens | 0.28 | 3.55*** | |||
| MacArthur | Mom Types | 0.23 | 3.11** | 0.24 | 23.08*** |
| Production | Child MacArthur Prod. | 0.39 | 5.24*** | ||
| MacArthur Sentence | Mom Types | 0.22 | 2.72** | 0.21 | 17.04*** |
| Complexity | Child MacArthur Prod. | 0.36 | 4.41*** | ||
| Bayley MDI | Mom Types | 0.23 | 3.32*** | 0.32 | 34.27*** |
| Child Bayley MDI | 0.46 | 6.68*** | |||
| Bayley Language | Mom Types | 0.12 | 1.53 | 0.27 | 26.24*** |
| Factor | Child Bayley Lang. Factor | 0.47 | 6.11*** | ||
| Mother 24-Month Language | |||||
| Types | Mom Types | 0.63 | 10.16*** | 0.41 | 55.60*** |
| Tokens | Mom Tokens | 0.65 | 10.72*** | 0.44 | 61.08*** |
| "Wh" questions | Mom "wh" questions | 0.65 | 10.79*** | 0.42 | 58.33*** |
References
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
MacWhinney, B. & Snow, C. E. (1985). The Child Language Data Exchange System. Journal of Child Language, 12, 271-296.
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