The effects of an observer's presence on maternal interactive behavior were examined through observation of mother-child pairs under informed and uninformed conditions. Results indicate mothers played with their children more, were more positive in their verbal behavior, and structured their children's activities more during the informed than…

Oral responses of 180 male and female undergraduates to scenarios containing positive-loving, neutral-informational, and/or negative-rejecting male child communications were obtained. Responses were scored along 25 specific categories, as well as a global rating of acceptance/rejection of child. (Author/JMB)

Results did not support previous work suggesting large amounts of communication failure in the spontaneous talk of 4-year-old children. (Author)

Describes the interactions of 1five mothers inexperienced with deaf people and a deaf five-year-old, a hearing two-year-old and a hearing four and one-half-year-old. The women had fewer successful initiations and shorter interactions with deaf children. Modifications in their communication, especially in relation to "motherese," were…

This study describes differences in the quantity and style of female preschool teachers' dyadic verbal interaction with the girls and boys in their classes. Sixteen hours of the spontaneous speech of 4 female teachers and 38 girls and boys were tape recorded in two classroom situations, then transcribed and analyzed. (Author/CS)

Study reports a technique for analyzing and categorizing certain gross features of the receptive language environment which constitute the primary source material for all of a baby's language learning. (Authors/MB)

Results indicated that girls' rule violations were affected by the model's skill level, and by interaction of the model's verbal and behavioral expressions relevant to those rules. (Authors)

It was suggested that working-class mothers less frequently believed that their infants were capable of communicating with other people, and hence felt it was futile to attempt to interact with them verbally. (Authors)