Mothers' Use of Personal Pronouns when Talking with Toddlers

Abstract

The verbal interaction of 2-year-old children (N = 46; 16 girls, 30 boys) and their mothers was audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed for the use of personal pronouns, the total number of utterances, the child's mean length of utterance, and the mother's responsiveness to her child's utterances. Mothers' use of the personal pronoun we was significantly related to their children's performance on the Stanford-Binet at age 5 and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children at age 8. Mothers' use of we in social--vocal interchange, indicating a system for establishing a shared relationship with the child, was closely connected with their verbal responsiveness to their children. The total amount of maternal talking, the number of personal pronouns used by mothers, and their verbal responsiveness to their children were not related to mothers' social class or years of education.

Linking Quality and Quantity of Parental Linguistic Input to Child Language Skills: A Meta‐Analysis

“…A meta-analysis helps to resolve discrepancies and yields a more precise estimate of the association between these constructs, that can in turn inform research and practice. 20 and 24 months and is minimal thereafter (Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons, 1991;Laks et al, 1990). Leaper and Smith (2004) found that girls were slightly more talkative than boys, but the overall effect size was negligible and was significant only in the youngest group of included children (12-35 months).…”

“…Language input is typically described in terms of both its quantity and quality. Quantity of input is more consistently defined, and can be operationalized in terms of the number of words or tokens (Rowe, 2012) or number of utterances (Laks, Beckwith, Cohen, & Cohen, 1990) spoken to the child. In contrast, quality of input can refer to a number of different facets of language.…”

“…Research suggests that girls may exhibit stronger receptive and expressive language skills in early development, but this difference declines between 20 and 24 months and is minimal thereafter (Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons, 1991; Laks et al, 1990). Leaper and Smith (2004) found that girls were slightly more talkative than boys, but the overall effect size was negligible and was significant only in the youngest group of included children (12–35 months).…”