Functional analysis of the contents of maternal speech to infants of 5 and 13 months in four cultures: Argentina, France, Japan, and the United States.

Abstract

Maternal speech to infants of 2 ages in 4 cultures was examined to probe how infant age and cultural variation influence the contents of that speech. Argentine, French, Japanese, and U.S. American mothers were individually videotaped in naturalistic free-play interactions at home with their 5-and 13-month-old infants, maternal speech was transcribed, and the contents classified as affect salient or information salient. Mothers in the 4 cultures use all speech categories to young infants, speak to older infants more than to younger infants, but differ in the emphasis of their speech. Similarities speak to the universality of maternal speech to infants, provoked perhaps by infants' common psychological status; differences in the speech mothers choose to emphasize speak perhaps to the expression of cultural preferences. Maternal speech to infants serves several significant functions in development. First, verbal interactions establish ties of

Maternal touch and maternal child-directed speech: effects of depressed mood in the postnatal period

“…Thus, the functional aspect of maternal speech appears to be affected by characteristics of the babies such as age and developmental level (Snow, 1977;Phillips, 1973;Bornstein et al, 1992;Penman et al, 1983;Sherrod et al, 1977). These changes are assumed to reflect changes in the nature of mother-infant relationship, and are also indicators of maternal adjustments to infant growth in communication (Snow, 1977;Sylvester-Bradley & Trevarten, 1978;Tronick & Gianino, 1986;Zlochower & Cohn 1996).…”

“…The coding unit was defined as an utterance with a single functional category, and the unit changed when there was a change in coded utterance type or when an utterance terminated and a silence of at least 2 s followed. Therefore, a minimum unit size could be a single word or the sound of a letter, for example, hi, a, aha, e or goo (Penman et al, 1983;Bornstein et al, 1992).…”

“…One function of maternal speech is to convey the intent of social interaction focused on describing and discovering the environment (Bornstein et al, 1992). However, both form and function of maternal child directed speech are affected by the emotional state of the mother (Murray, Kempton, Woolgar & Hooper, 1993;Zlochower & Cohn, 1996;Kaplan, Bachorowski & Zarlengo-Strouse, 1999).…”

“…Furthermore, the content of maternal child directed speech is affected by the age and developmental stage of infants (e.g. Phillips, 1973;Snow 1977;Penman et al, 1983;Bornstein et al, 1992). In order to observe possible cross sectional differences in mothers with and without depressed mood and their infants, touch and content of speech were analysed in mothers with babies falling into two age groups, namely 6-and 10-months.…”

“…Normally, mothers shift from talk about their infants' internal states and feelings to talk about their activities and external environment over the child's first year of life (Snow, 1977;Penman et al, 1983, Bornstein et al, 1992. The content of maternal speech in terms of whether it is affect-salient or information-salient has been used to evaluate the child-directed speech of non-depressed mothers (e.g., Penman, Cross, Milgrom-Friedman & Meares, 1983;Sherrod, Crawly, Petersen & Bennett, 1978;Broerse & Elias, 1994;Bornstein, Tal, Rahn, Galperin, Lamour, Ogino, Pecheux, Toda, Azuma & Tamis-LeMonda, 1992).…”