Cultural Influences on Child-Directed Speech in Spanish-Speaking, English-Speaking, and Bilingual Mothers in the U.S.

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Background
Cultures differ in childrearing attitudes. Hispanic parents in the United States have been described in ways consistent with a more adult-centered style in their child rearing, compared to European Americans who are more child centered. The present study asked whether these differences in childrearing attitudes are reflected in differences in properties of mother-child conversation and, if so, how those differences would be reflected in the English and Spanish conversations of Spanish-English bilingual mothers and their children.

Method
Twenty-two English monolingual European American mothers, 17 Spanish monolingual Hispanic American mothers, and 33 Spanish-English bilingual Hispanic American mothers were videorecorded in toy-play interactions with their 30-month old children. The bilingual mothers and children were recorded twice, once under the instruction to use Spanish and once under the instruction to use English. Separate analyses compared the Spanish and English monolingual conversations and the Spanish and English conversations of the bilingual mothers and children. The measures were discourse properties hypothesized to reflect parent-centered and child-centered styles of interaction and were calculated using CHILDES programs.

Results
Controlling for differences in children’s language ability and maternal education, the conversations between Spanish monolingual mothers and their children were characterized by more maternal utterances (F(1,37) = 9.10, p = .005, η2 = .197), proportionately fewer mother questions (F(1,37) = 14.24, p = .001, η2 = .278), and less child talk than the conversations between English monolingual mothers and their children (F(1,37) = 31.08, p < .001, η2 = .457). Similarly, the Spanish conversations between bilingual mothers and children were more adult-dominated than were their English conversations.

Conclusions
Cultural differences in broad attitudes about childrearing are reflected in properties of adult-child conversation. Specifically, in the interactions of monolingual Spanish-speaking mothers and their children, there is proportionately more adult talk as compared to child talk, and less elicitation of child talk than in the interactions of monolingual English-speaking European mothers and their children. These cultural differences are also reflected in the differences between the Spanish and English conversations that occur between bilingual mothers and children. Cultural influences need to be taken into account in understanding variability in early language experience of children in bilingual homes. Bilingual mothers and children are also bicultural mothers and children, with yet-to-be explored influences on bilingual children’s language development and language use.

Authors

• Katherine F Shanks, Florida Atlantic University
  Presenting Author

• Rosario Luz Rumiche, Florida Atlantic University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erika Hoff, Florida Atlantic University
  Non-Presenting Author