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Maternal responsive and directive behaviours and utterances as predictors of children's lexical development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2005

ELISE FRANK MASUR ,
VALERIE FLYNN  and
DOREEN L. EICHORST
ELISE FRANK MASUR
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
VALERIE FLYNN
Affiliation:
Aurora University
DOREEN L. EICHORST
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , February 2005 , pp. 63 - 91
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant HD37587 to the first author. The authors thank Gerald Mahoney for providing videotapes for training coders to use the Maternal Behavior Rating Scales (revised), Jennifer E. Nolten and Margaret Turner for coding, the reviewers and statistical consultants for comments and advice, and the participating children and mothers.