Directive interactions and early vocabulary development: the role of joint attentional focus.
Maternal directiveness, assessed by the mother's use of prescriptives, is correlated with slow vocabulary development. As prescriptives are most often used to redirect a child's attention to a different object or activity, it is hypothesized that attentional regulation underlies this negative relationship. In the present study, twelve mothers were videotaped interacting with their children aged 1;1, and 100 maternal utterances were coded for pragmatic intent. Prescriptives were coded as either changing (leading) or following the child's focus of attention. Only the frequency of mothers' follow-prescriptives correlated significantly with a productive vocabulary measure taken at 1;10. This correlation was high and positive, indicating that, given joint focus, directing a 13-month-old's behaviour can have beneficial effects on subsequent vocabulary development.
Akhtar
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N
Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Dunham
F
F
Dunham
P J
PJ
D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary