The Influence of Cultural Background and Communicative Task on Maternal Scaffolding Styles

• In Event: Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

The maternal language input that children receive varies across cultures (e.g., Winskel, 2010) and communicative settings (e.g., Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991). The present study examined the influence of culture and task on maternal scaffolding strategies. We compared the dialogue of American and Thai mothers as they interacted with their children across three tasks: prompted reminiscing, book sharing, and toy play. We expected the mothers’ communication styles to differ as a function of cultural background and dyadic task.

Participants were 21 English monolingual mother-child dyads living in the United States and 21 Thai monolingual mother-child dyads living in Thailand. Children were 4-year-old preschoolers. Mothers were asked to fill out the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (Marian, Blumenfeld, & Kaushanskaya, 2007) to assess the language profiles of the mother and the child. Dyads completed three tasks. The first task was a prompted reminiscing task, where mothers were asked to elicit autobiographical memories from their children using a set of assigned word prompts. The second task was a book sharing task. For this task, mothers were given a wordless picture book and were instructed to engage in conversation as they normally would with their child. The third task was a toy play task. Dyads were told to play with a set of farm animal toys. Interactions were video-recorded. Conversations were transcribed using Codes for the Analysis of Human Language (MacWhinney, 2000), then coded for specific language measures.

Data were analyzed using 2 (Culture: American, Thai) x 3 (Task: Prompted Reminiscing, Book Sharing, Toy Play) ANOVAs. Post-hoc comparisons, with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons, were conducted to follow up significant interactions between culture and task.

Comparisons revealed a main effect of culture (ps<.05), where American mothers spoke more and used more affirmations than Thai mothers. There was also a main effect of task (ps<.05). In the prompted reminiscing task, mothers spoke more and asked more open-ended questions than in the book sharing and toy play tasks. While book sharing, mothers used more attention directives compared to the other two tasks. During toy play, mothers used more affirmations and indirect action requests than in the other tasks. Additionally, there were significant interactions between culture and task (ps<.05). Thai mothers used more open-ended questions than American mothers during prompted reminiscing and toy play, but the two groups did not differ on this measure during book sharing. Similarly, Thai mothers used more attention directives during book sharing and toy play than American mothers, but groups did not differ in their use of attention directives during prompted reminiscing.

These findings suggest that culture shapes parents’ communicative styles. American and Thai mothers differ in communication styles when engaging in activities with their children. The results also provide evidence that discourse patterns differ depending on the nature of communicative task. Moreover, cultural differences in maternal scaffolding strategies are influenced by the type of interaction. We conclude that through dyadic interactions, linguistically competent adults socialize children to communicate in culture- and context-appropriate ways.

Authors

• Sirada Rochanavibhata, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Julia Borland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Viorica Marian, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author