Poster #180 - The Pragmatics of Maternal Language to 1- and 2-Year-Olds in Ethnically Diverse Families

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Mothers use speech to provide information, encourage communication, and regulate action. As infants explore their environments, mothers describe the objects and events of infant attention; ask questions to encourage infants to talk; and direct infants’ behaviors. As infants develop, mothers modify their language to accommodate infants’ new abilities.
Previous research on the pragmatics of maternal language predominantly emphasizes didactic input, given the influence of descriptive, referential language on infant language learning. Yet much research over-represents language interactions in WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) samples. Missing is a rich portrayal of the everyday language interactions between mothers and infants from diverse backgrounds. We asked: (1) How often do mothers use different language functions when interacting with their infants? (2) Do demographic variables, including infant age and sex and mother ethnicity, years of education, and years spent in the United States relate to mothers’ language input?
Participants were 190 mothers and their 14- and 24-month old infants, followed longitudinally. Dyads played with beads and a string and shared a book for 7 minutes. Videorecords were transcribed and coded at the utterance level for three language functions: providing information (“That’s a blue truck”), prompting infants to vocalize (“Say truck”, “What’s that?”), and regulating infant action (“Look here”, Push the truck”).
Individual mothers varied dramatically in how often they used the different types of speech. Overall, mothers regulated action most frequently, followed by providing information; mothers infrequently elicited infant vocalizations (Figure 1). Mothers of boys and girls alike selectively increased their prompts of infant vocalizations between 14 months, F(2, 294)=1.39, p=.009 (M=13.58, SD=10.93) and 24 months (M=24.06, SD=14.38), but remained unchanged in their use of action directives and providing information (Figure 2). African American mothers elicited vocalizations from infants more often than did Dominican and Mexican mothers at both 14 months (F(2, 188)=10.67, p<.001) and 24 months (F(9, 138)=3.51, p=.03). Moreover, within the two Latino immigrant groups, mothers who had lived in the United States longer elicited more vocalizations from their 24-month olds, r=.25 p=.01.
Mothers from ethnically diverse, non-WEIRD samples frequently use language to direct action rather than describe objects and events in the environment. However, there exist striking individual differences in language inputs even within a given ethnic group. Moreover, mothers tailor their language to meet infants’ developing skills—increasingly encouraging infants to vocalize over the course of the second year. In terms of ethnic differences, African American mothers use speech to elicit language in infants more often than Dominican and Mexican mothers. But as Latina mothers resided in the United States longer, they too relied on this form of language interaction, perhaps reflecting acculturation to U.S pragmatic norms.

Authors

• Katelyn Fletcher, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Jacob Lev Schatz, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yana Kuchirko, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author