Poster #108 - Developmental changes in mothers’ internal state utterances: Frequency and complexity differences by word category

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

This study assessed developmental changes in mothers’ production of utterances with internal state (IS) words referencing perception, volition, disposition, and cognition. De Villiers (2007) argued, based on adult grammar, that cognition words must be used in complex clausal structures because they are necessary to express complex relationships. Thus, she proposed, cognition words are harder to learn and understanding these complex sentence structures in part facilitates passing false belief tasks. To test this, we investigated developmental changes in the frequency and complexity of mothers’ utterances with IS words, especially cognition words, in naturalistic interactions with infants during their second year, a time cognition words typically appear in mothers’ speech. Twenty-nine mother-infant dyads (16 girls, 13 boys) participating in a longitudinal study were videotaped for 18 minutes during laboratory toy play when infants were 13, 17, and 21 months. With Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Iglesias, 2012) we identified maternal utterances containing IS words referencing perception (see, feel), volition (want need), disposition (happy, angry), and cognition (think, know) (Slaughter et al., 2008). To assess complexity, MLUs were calculated for these categories and for non-IS utterances. Numbers of clauses—one versus multiple (You know that one; I don’t think the bear’s gonna fit)—were also counted for IS utterances. An initial 2 (gender) x 3 (age) x 4 (IS subcategory: perception, volition, disposition, cognition) mixed ANOVA of utterance frequencies disclosed age and subcategory effects and their interaction. Although mothers’ perception and disposition utterances remained fairly stable over time, volition utterances rose strongly from 13 to 17 and from 17 to 21 months while cognition utterances surged by more than 60% from 17 to 21 months. (See Table 1.) A subsequent 2 (gender) x 3 (age) x 5 (utterance category: perception, volition, disposition, cognition, non-IS) mixed ANOVA of MLUs revealed overall increases with age and differences across categories. Non-IS utterances were shorter than all categories of utterances with IS words. At all ages, utterances with volition or cognition words were longer than utterances with disposition and perception words, which did not differ. (See Table 2.) An Age by IS category mixed Anova (See Table 2) revealed that although the percentages of complex, multiclause utterances referencing perception and disposition started low and increased gradually over time, the majority of volition and cognition utterances were multiclause at 13 months and remained so throughout the second year. Mothers used more complex utterances when they talked about internal states regardless of the age of their infants. Consistent with arguments that in adult language systems cognition and volition words are used most often in utterances with complex clausal structures (de Villiers, 2004), mothers especially used cognition words in more complex structures, perhaps partially explaining why infants acquire cognition words later. However, the role of semantics must be considered as well since want, a volition word, is acquired very early even though mothers use it in equally complex utterances.

Authors

• Janet Olson, Northern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Elise Frank Masur, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author