Maternal Speech to Japanese Children with and without Severe Mental Retardation

Abstract

Maternal speech to Japanese children with severe mental retardation and children without disabilities matched for mental age (MA) and language ability (LA), was compared. Subjects were 7 Japanese pre-linguistic children with severe mental retardation aged 3:1-8:4 and 5 controlled (MA, LA matched) children without disability aged 1:3-1:5. Mother-child naturalistic free-play interactions were individually videotaped and maternal speech was transcribed from the interaction for a 12-minute period. Child vocalization was analyzed by function and maternal speech was examined by function and syntactical form. Vocalizations of children with mental retardation were less spontaneous and less adequate than children without mental retardation. Maternal utterances to children with mental retardation were less responsive, more negative in content, and characterized by use of few nouns signifying objects. The result suggested that the Japanese mothers of children with severe mental retardation tried to use very simple maternal speech. It was concluded that mothers of children with mental retardation should be trained to increase their ability to respond to them.