Structural Aspects of Maternal Speech to Infants Reared in Poverty

Abstract

Mother-infant dyads (N = 27) were seen as part of a longitudinal study of lower-socioeconomic-status infants at high but varying risk for mild mental retardation. A 20-min unstructured interaction session was videotaped in a laboratory setting when the infants were 6 months old. Transcriptions were made of mothers' speech to their infants. Measures of maternal language included sentence form, amount of speech, and syntactic complexity. It was found that the proportion of imperatives, but not the amount of maternal speech, was positively correlated with a composite measure of risk status (High Risk Index) and negatively correlated with maternal education and WAIS IQ. Similar to previous findings for maternal speech to older infants, syntactic complexity was not significantly related to social risk indices. In terms of descriptive aspects of the data, there was a high degree of variability on the language measures-indicative of wide individual differences in maternal language style.

Maternal Language and Children's Receptive Language Five Years After an Intervention Program

“…On the other hand, the mean receptive language score of the original control children remained approximately the same with time. The durability of the experimental children's receptive language gains may be attributable in part to the continuing specifity in certain aspects of their mothers' language, as suggested by past studies (Adams & Ramey, 1980;Clarke-Stewart et al, 1979). Among all the comparisons on concepts, the experimental mothers showed the greatest frequency of similarity to the professional mothers in their references to number.…”

“…Past studies have shown that descriptive and interrogative maternal language is related to cognitive development in children, while imperative language is not (Adams & Ramey, 1980;Clarke-Stewart, Vanderstoep, & Killian, 1979). However, while intervention programs have resulted in maternal use of more descriptive and interrogative language (Clarke-Stewart, 1981), such studies have focused mainly on changes in maternal language soon after intervention.…”

The Association between Reading Comprehension and Prerequisite Skills for Children in Poverty

“…The results indicate that mothers from low SES backgrounds are more likely to use short and imperative sentences, ask fewer questions, and respond less often to their children than middle to high SES background (Adams & Ramey, 1980;Hart & Risley, 1995;Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991;Wulbert, Inglis, Kriegsman, & Mills, 1978). …”

“…Parental education, specifically maternal educational level is known to influence child language development (Adams & Ramey, 1980;Dollaghan et al, 1999). For example, Dollaghan et al (1999) examined the relationship between maternal education and early language development with 3-year-old children.…”

“…As a result, it is often hard to find one specific cause of a reading problem or a direct relationship between poverty and reading comprehension. Empirical evidence has shown that SES and maternal education are highly related to reading development (Adams & Ramey, 1980;Dollaghan et al, 1999). In addition, problems with reading comprehension may be associated with biological and environmental factors often found in low SES homes including single parent families, drug use during pregnancy, a negative medical history, and complications of labor and childbirth including low birth-weight and premature birth (Hooper et al, 1998;Sameroff et al, 1993;Stanton-Chapman et al, 2004).…”