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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.

Combining the joint attention approaches of Mundy and colleagues' (2007) experimental coding of infants' specific initiating and responding acts and of Bakeman and Adamson's (1986) descriptions of both infants' and mothers' behaviors during joint engagement, this study examined 29 infants' and mothers' initiatives and responses leading to success in achieving joint attention (JA) episodes during naturalistic interactions when infants were 13 and 17 months old. Analyses revealed developmental changes in initiative frequencies and in the origins of JA episodes. At 13 months, although infants' less sophisticated object-only initiatives (IObj) were most frequent, JA episodes most often originated in maternal combined initiatives (IJA), which focused on both object and partner. By 17 months, however, infants' combined initiatives were most frequent and led to more JA episodes than any other initiative type. Infants with more combined initiatives achieved more JA episodes at both ages and greater 17-month vocabularies.

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.

Mothers of 126 infants, 54 lower-socioeconomic status (SES) infants (26 younger, 4–11 months; 28 older, 12–19 months) and 72 middle-SES infants (12–17 months), answered questionnaires about their infants' typical television (TV) watching and interest, the frequency of their independent play with toys and dyadic play with and without toys, and whether or not the TV was typically on in the room at the time. Although infants spent little time actively watching TV, the majority of mothers in all groups reported the TV typically turned on in the room at least half the time during all types of play. Mothers reported middle-SES infants engaged more frequently in individual and dyadic toy play, but lower-SES infants were more often exposed to background TV/video during play. Because play is important to infant development and background TV can disrupt it, these findings raise concerns, particularly for infants residing in lower-SES households.

Mother–infant interactions are important to infant development because they are predictive of infants’ social, cognitive, and language development (Lamb, Bornstein, & Teti, 2002; Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, & Baumwell, 2001). Because maternal responsive and directive behaviors are associated with differential infant outcomes, it is important to investigate influences on mothers’ provision of responsive and directive behaviors. Yet, the dyadic interaction literature is predominantly unidirectional from maternal behavior to infant outcomes. Therefore, the current study examined infant initiating behaviors and consequent maternal responses in a sample of 26 13-month-old infants and their mothers, videotaped during 5 min of free-play. Findings revealed that infants produced a variety of initiatives, and that these different infant initiatives prompted differential patterns of maternal responsive versus directive behaviors. Further, results of analyses of divergent types of maternal directive behaviors – Responsive Directives, ReDirectives, and Intrusive Directives – also may help clarify major discrepancies in the current literature regarding the positive and negative effects of maternal directiveness.

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.

Forty-eight middle-class mothers answered questionnaires about their 11-through 18-month-old infants' typical television watching and interest, the frequency and duration of their independent play with toys and dyadic play with and without toys, and whether the television was typically on or not on in the room at the time. Mothers reported that most infants had little interest in and spent little time actively watching television. However, mothers reported the television was typically turned on in the room at least half the time during independent play with toys for 44% of infants and during dyadic play with toys for 53% of infants. These findings provide evidence relevant to researchers' and practitioners' concerns regarding the potential negative impact of television's presence on infant development, mother–child interaction, and the ecological validity of observational research methods involving play or interactions in the absence of a television.

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.

Intrapersonal versus interpersonal factors were examined as predictors of verbal and action imitation during free play interactions by 20 mothers and their infants at ages 10, 13, 17, and 21 months. Participants’ conversational utterances and object play indicated their intrapersonal dispositions to engage in those behaviors spontaneously and provided measures of interpersonal opportunities for partner imitation. Analyses of predictive relations, including partial correlations controlling for the influence of partner modeling of imitation as well as the factors of disposition and opportunity alternately, yielded relative consistency across verbal and action domains, but distinctive patterns by partner. Infants’ imitation was more strongly predicted by disposition than by opportunity. In contrast, mothers’ imitation was more strongly predicted by opportunity, although mothers’ disposition also predicted their verbal imitation late in the second year. These results highlight the need to consider both dispositional and interpersonal influences on children's and mothers’ imitation.

To explore whether imitation of novel behaviors might serve as a lexical acquisition strategy for some infants, relations between infants' early spontaneous reproduction of novel and of familiar words and their subsequent lexicons were compared in a longitudinal sample of 20 infants during natural interactions with their mothers at 13, 17, and 21 months of age. Both maternal report and observational measures of noun and non-noun lexicons were analyzed. There were marked contrasts in quantity and proportions of nouns between reported and observed lexicons. However, when earlier vocabulary levels were statistically controlled, infants' early replication of novel, but not familiar, words was associated with growth in both reported and observed noun and non-noun vocabularies. Infants' early imitation of novel words predicts, and may facilitate, their later lexical development.

Stability over time and consistency across contexts in the interactive behaviors of 10 girls and 10 boys and their mothers were investigated during play and bath sessions when the children were 10, 13, 17, and 21 months of age. Despite general instability and inconsistency in the children’s social responsivity, interest in the toys, and positive affect, these behaviors evidenced systematic and expected relations with maternal characteristics by the middle of the second year. Mothers’ behaviors demonstrated striking differences, with responsiveness a highly stable and consistent personal style, affect expression an unstable but consistent temporary quality, and directiveness an unstable and inconsistent pattern. The results also highlight the importance of considering both child age and interactive context in understanding dyadic behaviors. Mothers’ interactive patterns of behavior have been associated with significant consequences for both normal and disabled infants and children. In particular, mothers’ responsiveness, characterized by “prompt, contingent, and appropriate (not simply contiguous) behaviors” (Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda (1989, p. 50), has been positively correlated with their children’s concurrent and subsequent scores on a variety of measures of intellectual, play, and language competence (e.g., Beckwith & Cohen, 1989; Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda, 1989; Bradley, 1989; Fewell, Casal, Glick, Wheeden, & Spiker, 1996; Mahoney, Boyce, Fewell, Spiker

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.

Twenty mother–infant dyads (10 boys, 10 girls) were videotaped longitudinally at ages 10, 13, 17, and 21 months during in-home free play and bath sessions. Mothers’ and infants’ responses to their partners’ naturally occurring action and vocal/verbal imitations were described, and relations to infants’ imitation rates and vocabularies were examined. Mothers’ response rates were consistently high and unrelated to infants’ imitation rates. As early as 10 months, infants responded to the great majority of maternal imitations, especially action imitations, often with actions. Infants’ return imitations to action matching indicated increasing awareness of being imitated. Infants’ responses to mothers’ vocal/verbal imitation were associated with their later vocabulary levels. Children who would be more lexically advanced at 17 and/or 21 months provided more social responses at 10 months, more socially responsive actions and return verbal imitations at 13 months, and more non-imitative socially responsive words at 17 and 21 months.

Although language researchers have often noted the frequency with which gestures accompany children’s first words (e.g., Dore, 1974), only recently have they begun to explore the acquisition of these gestures and to inquire into the role they may play in children’s transition to early verbal communication. Bruner (1975a) and Bates and her colleagues (Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1975; Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1977; 1979) have emphasized the functional continuity between prelinguistic and initial linguistic signaling, suggesting that young children’s early communicative intentions are expressed gesturally before they can be encoded in conventional verbal symbols. Thus, the pointing gesture has received particular attention since its object-distinguishing function may be a crucial precursor of verbal naming (Bates et al., 1979; Bruner, 1975a; Lempers, 1979; Lempers, Flavell, & Flavell, 1977; Leung & Rheingold, 1981; Murphy, 1978; Ninio & Bruner, 1978; Werner & Kaplan, 1963).

Individual play interactions of parents with their preschool-aged boys and girls were examined to determine the ways mothers and fathers provided and elicited lexical information about the names and functions of the parts of a complex toy car. Parents' and children's speech was analyzed for utterances that provided or requested the name (label) or purpose (function) of a car part and for nonlabeling utterances that mentioned the part (term). Analyses revealed significant contrasts between fathers and mothers in their interactive styles and in the amounts and kinds of lexical information they provided and elicited. Fathers' speech contained more different terms than did mothers', and more fathers than mothers described the functions of the car parts. Fathers were also more cognitively and linguistically demanding: More fathers than mothers requested labels and functions from their children. Children, in turn, produced more total vocabulary to fathers than to mothers. These parent-child interaction patterns suggest that fathers as well as mothers may exert an active influence on children's language development. The influence of parent-child interaction styles on young children's language and cognitive development has increasingly become a focus of research attention (ClarkeStewart, 1978; Gleason & Weintraub, 1978). After first establishing that mothers provide special modifications in their speech to young children (Snow, 1977), a number of researchers have attempted to distinguish those features of mothers' speech that may advance children's language acquisition. For example, Newport, Gleitman, and Gleitman (1977) found a statistically significant positive relationship between the frequency of maternal labeling utterances (e.g., "That's an apple") and the size of children's vocabularies.

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.

First grade, third grade, and college S s attempted to memorize a single set of items over the course of 5 trials, each trial consisting of a 45-sec study period followed by a free recall test. On all trials but the first, S was allowed to have available during his study period only half of the total set of items, but was free to select whichever items he wished to include in this half. Third grade and college S s were significantly more prone than first grade S s to select for study items not recalled in the immediately preceding recall test. The results suggest that the strategy of deliberately concentrating one's study activities on the less well mastered segments of materials to be learned, like other elementary memory strategies (e.g., rote rehearsal), cannot automatically be assumed to be part of a young child's repertoire of learning techniques.

Infants’ imitation has been an important focus not only of language developmentalists, but also of researchers concerned with infants’ cognitive (e.g.,McCall, 1979;Piaget, 1962; Uigiris, 1981) and social (Baldwin, 1895;Pawlby, 1977; Uigiris, 1981, 1984) development. In fact, two competing views of the function of imitation in language development are derived from the contrasting cognitive and social approaches to imitation.