Communication patterns between internationally adopted children and their mothers: Implications for language development

Abstract

This study presents findings on patterns of communication between internationally adopted children and their mothers in order to better understand the nature of these interactions and their influence on language learning. We examined maternal language use and joint attention behaviors of mothers and their children in 21 mother-child pairs: 10 pairs included children adopted from China living in francophone families, and 11 included francophone children living with their biological families; all were matched for socioeconomic status, sex, and age. The children were, on average, 15 months of age at initial testing when they were video-taped with their mothers for purposes of describing the mothers' language use and the mothers' and children's joint attention behaviors. Vocabulary development was assessed at 15 and again at 20 months of age using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. The results support the conclusion that adoptive mothers play an active role in promoting and maintaining joint attention and that the redirecting style they used the most and that correlated with their children's later vocabulary development contrasts with the following style that correlates with vocabulary development in nonadopted children raised in mainstream North American families.

Communication patterns between parents and children: Comparing mothers and fathers in different learner contexts

“…In order to examine learner-related factors, the present study examined the attentional regulation strategies of adoptive parents of children from China in comparison to those of birth parents. The findings on mothers of adopted children have been reported previously; thus, the present results extend that study by including results for adoptive and birth fathers (Gauthier, Genesee, Dubois, & Kasparian, 2011).…”

“…This initial inability to verbally communicate with their adoptive parents may result in differences in interaction strategies in comparison to what is typically observed for children of the same age and developmental level living with their birth parents. There is some evidence that mothers interact with their IA children in a manner that is similar to that found for mothers with younger children or children with developmental delays (Gauthier et al, 2011)…”

“…In order to examine the relationships between fathers’ attention regulation strategies and general language use at 15 months versus the IA children's vocabulary development at 20 months, Spearman correlations were calculated. Only the fathers’ results are reported here because these correlations were reported for mothers by Gauthier and colleagues (2011). Gauthier and colleagues had previously shown that the number of redirective utterances used by IA mothers when their children were 15 months was significantly and positively correlated with their children's expressive vocabulary scores on the MCDI at 20 months, r (10) = .57, p < 0.01.…”

“…Gauthier and her colleagues found that the adoptive mothers used significantly more utterances than birth mothers in and even outside of JA. More language input is typically associated with greater vocabulary development (e.g., Huttenlocher et al, 1991), and adoptive mothers’ use of redirections in particular has been associated with vocabulary size in adopted children (Gauthier et al, 2011). Thus, it appears that adoptive parents may be responding to the specific needs of their children, or at least what they perceive to be needs, for extended or enriched input in order to catch up to their nonadopted peers.…”

“…In an in-depth examination of adoptive mothers’ interactions with their IA children, Gauthier and colleagues (2011) found that adoptive mothers played an active role in promoting and maintaining JA with their 15-month-old children and that their children were not significantly delayed in engaging in JA in comparison with nonadopted controls. They also found that the adoptive mothers’ interactional strategies differed from those of the birth mothers.…”