Maternal language during mother-child play sessions was examined in several samples (Ns = 12 to 20) that differed with respect to the young preschoolers' chronological ages, language proficiency, subsequent reading achievement, and familial incidence of reading disability. For most of the structural and functional aspects of mothers' utterances that were compared, differences among the mothers were unrelated to differences among their children. The results indicated, however, that young children from families with dyslexic members, and children with less advanced language abilities, were exposed to higher frequencies of several kinds of poor models of English sentence structures. The etiological implications of these input differences and similarities are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Barnes, S., Gutfreund, M., Satterly, D. & Wells, G. (1983). Characteristics of adult speech which predict children's language development. Journal of Child Language , 10, 65-84.
2.
Brown, R. (1973). A First Language. The Early Stages ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
3.
Bryant, P., Bradley, L., Maclean, M. & Crossland, J. (1989). Nursery rhymes, phonological skills and reading . Journal of Child Language, 16, 407-428.
4.
Butler, S.R., Marsh, H.W., Sheppard, M.J. & Sheppard, J.L. (1985). Seven-year longitudinal study of the early prediction of reading achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 349-361.
5.
Byrne, B. (1981). Deficient syntactic control in poor readers: is a weak phonetic memory code responsible? Applied Psycholinguistics , 2, 210-212.
6.
Catts, H.W. (1989). Speech production deficits in developmental dyslexia . Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 54, 422-428.
7.
Cohen, J. (1960) A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 26, 623-631.
8.
Conti-Ramsden, G. (1985). Atypical language development: maternal input to language-impaired children. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto , Canada, April 1985
9.
DeFries, J.C., Vogler, G.P. & LaBuda, M.C. (1987) Colorado family reading study: an overview. In J L. Fulker & E. C. Simmel (eds), Behavior Genetics : Principles and Applications II (Hillsdale, NJ. Erlbaum), 357-368.
10.
Donahue, M., Pearl, R. & Bryan, T. (1982). Learning disabled children's syntactic proficiency on a communicative task. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders , 47, 397-403.
11.
Elliot, L.L. & Hammer, M.A. (1988). Longitudinal changes in auditory discrimination in normal children and children with language-learning problems. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 53, 467-474.
12.
Farrar, M.J. (1990). Discourse and the acquisition of grammatical morphemes . Journal of Child Language, 17, 607-624
13.
Finucci, J.M. & Childs, B. (1981). Are there really more dyslexic boys than girls ? In A. Ansara, N. Geschwind, A Galaburda, M. Albert & N. Gartrell (eds), Sex Differences in Dyslexia ( Towson, MD. Orton Dyslexia Society), 1-9.
14.
Finucci, J.M., Guthrie, J.T., Childs, A.L. , Abbey, H. & Childs, B. (1976). The genetics of specific reading disability. Annals of Human Genetics, 40, 1-23.
15.
Fowler, A.E. (1988). Grammaticality judgments and reading skill in Grade 2. Annals of Dyslexia, 38, 73-94
16.
Furrow, D., Nelson, K. & Benedict, H. (1979). Mothers' speech to children and syntactic development some simple relationships. Journal of Child Language, 6, 423-442.
17.
Gleitman, L., Newport, E. & Gleitman, H. (1984). The current status of the motherese hypothesis . Journal of Child Language, 11, 43-79.
18.
Hallgren, B. (1950). Specific dyslexia ('congenital word blindness'): a clinical and genetic study. Acta Psychiatrica et Neurologica , 65, 1-287.
19.
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1986). Function and structure in maternal speech: their relation to the child's development of syntaxDevelopmental Psychology, 22, 153-165.
20.
— (1987). Topic relations in mother-child conversation. First Language, 7, 145-158.
21.
— (1989). Effects of social class and interactive setting on maternal speech. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City, MO, April 1989.
22.
Hollingshead, A.B. & Redlich, F.C. (1958). Social Class and Mental Illness ( New York: Wiley).
23.
Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: a longitudinal study of 54 children through fourth grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 437-447.
24.
Kaufman, A.S. (1977). A McCarthy short form for rapid screening of preschool, kindergarten, and first grade children. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2, 149-157.
25.
Kean, M. (1984) The question of linguistic anomaly in developmental dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 34, 137-151.
26.
Lapadat, J.C. (1991). Pragmatic language skills of students with language and/or learning disabilities: a quantitative synthesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24, 147-158.
27.
Leong, C.K. (1989). Productive knowledge of derivational rules in poor readers. Annals of Dyslexia, 39, 94-115.
28.
Mann, V.A. & Ditunno, P. (1991). Phonological deficiencies: effective predictors of future reading problems In G. Pavlides (ed.), Dyslexia : A Neuropsychology and Learning Perspective (New York: Wiley).
29.
McCarthy, D. (1972). McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (New York: Psychological Corporation)
30.
McDonald, L. & Pien, D. (1982) Mother conversational behaviour as a function of interactional mtent. Journal of Child Language, 9. 337-358.
31.
Morice, R. & Slaghuis, W. (1985). Language performance and reading ability at 8 years of age. Applied Psycholinguistics, 6, 141-161.
32.
Nagy, W., Herman, P.A. & Anderson, R.C. (1985). Learning words from context . Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 233-253.
33.
Nelson, K.E. (1989). Strategies for first language teaching. In M. L Rice & R. L. Schiefelbusch (eds), The Teachability of Language (Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes).
34.
Newport, E., Gleitman, H. & Gleitman, L. (1977). Mother I'd rather do it myself: some effects and non-effects of maternal speech style. In C. E. Snow & C. Ferguson (eds), Talking to Children: Language Input and Acquisition (CambndgeCambndge University Press).
35.
Olsen-Fulero, L. (1982). Style and stability in mother conversational behaviour: a study of individual differences. Journal of Child Language , 9, 543-564.
36.
Olson, R., Wise, B., Conners, F., Rack, J. & Fulker, D. (1989) Specific deficits in component reading and language skills: genetic and environmental influences. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22, 339-348.
37.
Phillips, J.R. (1973). Syntax and vocabulary of mothers' speech to young children: age and sex comparisons. Child Development, 44, 182-185.
38.
Pratt, A.C. & Brady, S. (1988). Relation of phonological awareness to reading disability in children and adults. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 319-323.
39.
Scarborough, H.S. (1984). Continuity between childhood dyslexia and adult reading. British Journal of Psychology, 75, 329-348.
40.
— (1989). Prediction of reading disability from familial and individual differences. Journal of Educational Psychology , 81, 101-108.
41.
— (1990a). Index of productive syntax. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11,1-22.
42.
— (1990b). Very early language deficits in dyslexic children . Child Development, 61, 1728-1743.
43.
— (1991a). Antecedents to reading disability: preschool language development and literacy experiences of children from dyslexic families . Reading and Writing, 3, 219-233.
44.
— (1991b). Early syntactic development of dyslexic children . Annals of Dyslexia, 41, 207-220.
45.
Scarborough, H.S., Dobrich, W. & Hager, M. (1991). Preschool literacy experience and later reading achievement. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24, 508-511.
46.
Scarborough, H.S. & Wyckoff, J. (1986). Mother, I'd still rather do it myself: some further non-effects of 'motherese'. Journal of Child Language, 13, 431-437.
47.
Share, D.L., Jorm, A.F., Maclean, R. & Matthews, R. (1984) Sources of individual differences in reading acquisition . Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, 1309-1324.
48.
Share, D.L. & Silva, P.A. (1987). Language deficits and specific reading retardation cause or effect? British Journal of Disorders of Communication , 22, 219-226.
49.
Silva, P.A., McGee, R. & Williams, S. (1985). Some characteristics of 9-year-old boys with general reading backwardness or specific reading retardation. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 26, 407-421.
50.
Stanovich, K.E. (1986) Matthew effects in reading: some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360-406.
51.
Stanovich, K.E., Cunmingham, A.E. & Cramer, B.B. (1984). Assessing phonological awareness in kindergarten children: issues of task comparability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38, 175-190.
52.
Stanovich, K.E., Cunningham, A.E. & Feeman, D.J. (1984). Intelligence, cognitive skills, and early reading progressReading Research Quarterly, 19, 278-303.
53.
Stuart, M. & Coltheart, M. (1988). Does reading develop in a sequence of stages? Cognition, 30, 139-181.
54.
Taylor, H.G., Lean, D. & Schwartz, S. (1989). Pseudoword repetition ability in learning-disabled childrenApplied Psycholinguistics, 10, 203-219.
55.
Tunmer, W.E., Hemman, M.L. & Nesdale, A.R. (1988). Metalinguistic abilities and beginning reading . Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 134-158
56.
Vogler, G.P., DeFries, J.C. & Decker, S.N. (1985). Family history as an indicator of risk for reading disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 18, 419-421.
57.
Wolf, M. & Goodglass, H. (1986). Dyslexia, dysnomia, and lexical retrieval: a longitudinal study. Brain and Language, 28, 154-168.
Yoder, P.J. & Kaiser, A.P. (1989). Alternative explanations for the relationship between maternal verbal interaction style and child language development. Journal of Child Language, 16, 141-160.
