Analytic,synthetic, abstracting,and word-class-defining aspects of verbal mother-child interactions

Phenomena of language teaching and learning in the course of verbal interactions between one mother and her daughter were analyzed. The daughter was between 18 and 27 months old during the recordings, and her utterance length ranged from 1,5 to 4,0 morphemes. Twenty hours of interactions were analyzed and the emphasis was placed upon sequential aspects and mathemagenic features of the conversations. It was demonstrated that the mother performs much analytic, synthetic, abstracting, and word-class-defining work during these verbal interactions. These maternal instructional activities seem to lead not only to the child's learning of language rules but also to her employment of the abstracting, analytical, and synthetic methodology. It is concluded that the main explanatory focus has to be on the mother in the attempts to explain language transmission and acquisition. Basic similarities to other instructional/skill training situations are suggested. Neither extraordinary complex cognitive nor innate linguistic capacities need to be assumed to explain the phenomena in question.     

Three-term contingency patterns in mother-child verbal interactions during first-language acquisition

Selections from a large longitudinal data set of verbal interactions between a mother and her child are presented. Two sets of three-term contingency sequences that seemed to reflect maternal rewards and corrections were noted. Both the antecedents as well as the immediate consequences of maternal interventions are presented to explore training and learning processes. The observed frequencies of three-step sequences are compared to those expected based upon Markov-chain logic to substantiate the patterning of the interactions. Behavioral conceptualizations of the learning process are supported by these analyses, although their sufficiency is questioned. It is suggested that maternal rewards and corrections should be integrated with perceptual, cognitive, and social learning conceptualizations in a skill-learning approach to explain the complexity of language transmission and acquisition processes.     

Changes in verbal child-mother interactions with increasing language skills of the child

Protocols of language interactions between mothers and children are analyzed. The children ranged in age from 2,2 years to 5,0 years. Systematic changes in the interactions were found with the increasing level of language skills of the child. Mothers generally proved to be very sensitive measuring instruments of the language capacities of their children and they adapted their verbal utterances to these capacities. The syntactical forms as well as the communicated contents of the message were changing with increasing language skill. Nonhuman environmental influences on the language behaviors were studied in part and changes in the use of these situational resources by the mothers were observed. Individual differences in the teaching methods of the mothers as well as in the reactions of the children are discussed.     

Author Index Volume 7

Authors Index

Author Index Volume 7     

Factors of style and personality

In an attempt to find relationships between psychological and linguistic variables, style samples of short stories, 300 words each, were analyzed according to formal criteria and the results were correlated with scores on personality tests. The number of significant correlations supported the hypothesis that style is related to personality. A factor analysis, using the principal component solution and Varimax rotation (Harman, 1967), of the correlation matrix resulted in six identifiable factors of style, three factors of psychological tests, and a large number of small factors, each represented only by two to five experimental variables with significant loadings. A significant loading for interpretation purposes was defined in agreement with Guilford (1956) as 0.30 or greater, positive or negative. A close examination of style factors led to the tentative differentiation of a basic language factor as resulting from grammatical constraint, and several factors of subjective style of individuals. Some of these later factors had enough loadings on personality variables to permit cautious psychological interpretation.     

Processes and products of imitation: Additional evidence that imitation is progressive

The spontaneous verbal interactions of two children and their babysitter were recorded over the period of half a year. The children were males, from middle-class backgrounds, and 2 years old at the beginning of the observation period. Imitated utterances were found to surpass quantitatively spontaneous ones on the dimensions of grammatical and semantic complexity. With few exceptions, new structures appeared first in imitative utterances and only later in spontaneous ones. Both the higher complexity and the prior appearance of new constructions in imitative utterances suggest that imitation fulfilled a progressive function for the observed children.     

Temperamental emotionality in preschoolers and parental mood disorders

A number of models developed in the adult psychopathology literature (i.e., L. A. Clark & D. Watson, 1991) have asserted that low levels of positive emotionality (PE) are predisposing factors or precursors for depression and represent a form of temperamental risk for depression. Further support for this claim would derive from evidence linking low PE to known indicators of risk for depression. The authors examined the association between temperamental emotionality in young children and parental mood disorders. One hundred unselected preschool-aged children completed a battery of emotion-eliciting tasks tapping aspects of PE, negative emotionality (NE), and behavioral inhibition (BI). Parental psychopathology was assessed with semistructured diagnostic interviews. Low PE in children was associated with maternal, but not paternal, mood disorder. The low PE-maternal depression link was relatively specific, as there were few associations between low PE and other forms of parental psychopathology or between NE and BI and parental mood disorders.