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The current study examined how mothers’ production of four types of internal state words at multiple ages across the second year in a free play context was related to their infants’ acquisition of ...

Mothers’ provision of utterances with internal state words has been shown to influence infants’ acquisition of internal state vocabulary and has been proposed to foster preschoolers’ theory of mind development. In this article the authors examine maternal internal state speech during free play with infants at 13, 17, and 21 months. The study assessed developmental changes in the frequency and complexity of the mothers’ utterances referencing perception, volition, disposition, and cognition. Mothers’ use of internal state words, especially volition and cognition words, increased with age. Internal state utterances were longer than utterances without internal state words, and more than half of all cognition and two-thirds of all volition utterances were syntactically complex. Mothers’ production of utterances with internal state words was related to their overall MLUs whereas their production of utterances without was not. Thus, mothers do not simplify utterances when they talk about internal states, even with young infants, and mothers’ growing use of internal state words as their infants age may partially explain increases in their overall utterance lengths during the second year of life.

Research on immediate effects of background television during mother–infant toy play shows that an operating television in the room disrupts maternal communicative behaviors crucial for infants’ vocabulary acquisition. This study is the first to examine associations between frequent background TV/video exposure during mother–infant toy play at home and subsequent maternal speech characteristics and infant vocabularies. Twenty-five mothers completed a survey of background television exposure and a vocabulary measure for infants aged 13 and 17 months. Mothers’ total word production and numbers of different words at each age were calculated from transcripts of play interactions with no television present. Greater exposure to background television during dyadic play negatively predicted infants’ vocabularies and mothers’ speech quantity and lexical diversity at 17 months. Moreover, these maternal speech characteristics fully mediated the association between exposure to background television during dyadic play and infants’ expressive vocabulary acquisition.

To investigate possible influences on and consequences of mothers’ speech, specific infant behaviors preceding and following four pragmatic categories of mothers’ utterances – responsive utterances, supportive behavioral directives, intrusive behavioral directives, and intrusive attentional directives – were examined longitudinally during dyadic free play at ages 13, 17, and 21 months. Analyses revealed developmental increases in children’s positive social and object-directed behaviors before and after maternal speech. Responsive utterances were the most likely to be preceded by social and object initiatives and more likely than intrusive directives to occur following high toy interest. Although mothers’ intrusive behavioral and attentional directives were often preceded by infants’ disengagement from play and toys, they were followed by infants’ greater levels of toy interest. Infants’ rates of compliance were substantial following all directives. The findings reveal differential behavioral circumstances preceding and following mothers’ responsive versus directive speech and their supportive directive versus intrusive directive utterances.

Thirty infants at 1;1 and their mothers were videotaped while playing for 18 minutes. Experimental stimuli were presented in three communicative intent contexts – proto-declarative, proto-imperative, and ambiguous – to elicit infant communicative bids that did and did not contain gestures. Mothers’ responses were analyzed, and their verbal responses were further coded as object labels, action labels, internal state labels, and nonlabeling utterances. Results demonstrated differential responses to infants’ gestural and nongestural bids. Mothers responded more often and were more likely to provide a verbal response in all contexts when infants’ communicative bids included gestures. They were also more likely to provide an object label and less likely to provide nonlabeling utterances to gestural than nongestural bids in the proto-declarative and ambiguous contexts. The privileged responses following infants’ gestures may serve as a mechanism for vocabulary acquisition.

Twenty-four infants at 1 ; 1 and their mothers were videotaped for 18 minutes while playing. Infants' pointing, reaching and object-extending gestures were coded in three communicative intent contexts: proto-declarative, or commenting; proto-imperative, or requesting; and ambiguous. Mothers' responses to infants' gestures were coded as object labels, action labels, internal state labels and non-labeling utterances. Infants most often pointed in the proto-declarative and used object extensions in the proto-imperative context. Infants produced pointing and reaching equivalently in the ambiguous context. Mothers' responses included object labels more often in response to points than object extensions. In contrast, mothers provided action labels most often in response to object extensions. Mothers produced large proportions of internal state labels, although the type varied by gesture. Results suggest mothers' labels following infants' gestures may serve as a mechanism for vocabulary acquisition and internal state understanding.

Twenty mothers' provision of responsive, supportive behavioural directive, and intrusive behavioural and attentional directive speech was investigated during interactions with their children at ages 0 ; 10, 1 ; 1, 1 ; 5 and 1 ; 9 in two natural contexts, free play and bathtime. Issues examined included developmental change, contextual differences, consistency across contexts and stability over time. Analyses revealed increases in frequencies of maternal responsive and supportive directive utterances and decreases in maternal intrusive directives with age. Differences between contexts included more speech and supportive directiveness during play than bath. Responsiveness and intrusive attentional directiveness demonstrated considerable consistency and stability. Mothers provided greater responsiveness to girls than to boys, but more intrusive directives to boys than to girls. Mothers' production of supportive and intrusive directives was unrelated, and their rates of responsive speech were inversely associated with their rates of intrusive directive speech, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between supportive and intrusive directiveness.

Predictive relations were examined between measures of 20 mothers' behavioural and verbal general and specific responsiveness and intrusive and supportive directiveness and their children's subsequent expressive vocabularies during three developmental periods with endpoints at the beginning, middle, and end of the second year: 0;10 to 1;1, 1;1 to 1;5, and 1;5 to 1;9. Regression analyses, controlling for mothers' utterance frequencies and children's initial lexicons, revealed considerable consistency between reported and observed lexicons but changing patterns of predictive relations with development. During the first period, behavioural, but not verbal, measures of maternal responsiveness and supportive directiveness were positively predictive. In period two, verbal, but not behavioural, measures predicted children's vocabularies, with specific responsiveness and supportive directiveness as positive predictors and intrusive directiveness as a negative predictor. During the final period, mothers' behavioural and verbal responsiveness and behavioural supportive directiveness positively predicted and their verbal intrusive directiveness negatively predicted children's lexical growth.

Mothers' verbal responses to their infants' spontaneous imitations of familiar and non-familiar words during naturally occurring interactions were examined in a longitudinal sample observed at 1 ; 1, 1 ; 5 and 1 ; 9. Maternal responses to both familiar and non-familiar imitations exhibited structural characteristics likely to be facilitative of early word learning, including shorter and single-word utterances and reproductions of imitated words in sentence-final position. Mothers also responded differentially to infants' non-familiar versus familiar imitations. Mothers produced more return imitations and more exact repetitions, providing an extra exemplar, following infants' imitations of non-familiar words. The familiar words infants imitated were more likely to receive the more complex expanded and reduced+expanded return imitations. Results suggest mothers' responses to infants' verbal imitations could serve as a mechanism for facilitating language acquisition.

This paper examines four mothers' responses to three object-related gestures (pointing, extending objects, and open-handed reaching) by their first-born infants from 0; 9 to 1; 6, and the impact of their responses on the children's transition from gestural to verbal communication. Analysis revealed that the mothers responded differentially to their children's pointing gestures, reciprocating to a greater degree with labels of the indicated objects. The children, in turn, produced more object-labelling words with pointing than with other gestures. In addition, the mothers' labelling responses to pointing significantly predicted the extent of their children's object-naming vocabularies.