The relation of social and linguistic input measures to early vocabulary development was examined in 30 low-income African American mother-infant pairs. Observations were conducted when the child was 0 years, 1 month (0;1), 0;4, 0;8, 1;0, 1;6, and 2;0. Maternal input was coded for word types and tokens, contingent responsiveness, and…

This study explored the relationships between several aspects of maternal language and measures of the psycholinguistic abilities of 26 Mexican-American mothers and their children enrolled in Head Start. Several significant relationships were obtained including a significant correlation between mothers' and childrens' total language scores.…

The adjacent utterances of three mothers and their children, aged 22.5 to 26.5 months, were recorded and analyzed. Each mother was found most frequently to express the same semantic-syntactic relation as did her child in the preceding utterance. This correspondence appeared to be independent of the parent utterance which preceded the matching…

An investigation was made of the episodic structure of maternal speech to young children during a free-play session. Findings indicate that maternal speech was organized so as to provide a high degree of redundancy, suggesting that the organization of maternal speech increases predictability in the child's language environment. (Author/AM)

Since general principles of first language acquisition and environmental input have been clarified by research of the last decade, more differentiated questions are explored in the present study. The main goal is the investigation of similarities and differences in the language teaching and learning processes involved in the verbal interactions…

The use of gestures by four infants was recorded as they interacted with their mothers. Waving, extending objects, and headshaking generally achieved a threshold of at least 10 instances within one month of acquisition. Both waving and headshaking were often first used in imitative and game routines with the mother before they became…

Functional and linguistic aspects of the speech of Dutch-speaking mothers from three social classes to their two-year-old children were studied to test the hypothesis that simplified speech is crucial to language acquisition. Available from Plenum Publishing Corp., 227 W. 17th St., New York, NY 10011. (Author/RM)

The nature of early games and how they might assist the infant in language acquisition were explored in a longitudinal study of two mother-infant dyads, using video-recordings of their free play. The analysis of appearance and disappearance games was particularly revealing. (EJS)

Mothers were found to respond differentially to their infants' object-related gestures. Pointing was found to have an especially strong correlation with mothers' object-labelling responses, which in turn were predictive of the child's object-naming vocabulary. (Author/JB)

Reports on studies examining the extent to which mothers tailor their speech to a child's level of linguistic ability. Methodological implications for language acquisition research are discussed. (AM)

A study was conducted to determine the efficacy of utilizing Leach's interrogation model as a means for analyzing question types used by mothers and their children's responses to various interrogative forms. Data analyzed consisted of language samples obtained from three preschool children and their mothers during mother-child interactions plus…

A study was conducted to determine the relationship between maternal input to early language learners and language acquisition and to answer the following questions: (1) Does nursery language used with the child change after he begins to talk? (2) Is there reason to believe that the child's speech is influenced by or influences the mother's…

The relationship between different measures of maternal directiveness and different measures of referential style were investigated in the same group of eight mother-infant dyads. Findings suggest that the attentional regulation hypothesis may be less valuable as a means of explaining stylistic variation in early vocabulary composition. (15…

Analyzes dialogs between mothers and their deaf or hearing children, while controlling for child age and linguistic ability. Results showed that the conversational interaction in mother-child dyads with deaf children was more restricted than that with hearing children. This seemed to be related to the linguistic ability of the deaf children. (SED)

Reports on a study investigating the relationship between children's linguistic environment and language acquisition. In particular, the study examined the effect of mothers' speech on subsequent child speech. (Author/AM)