Influences of mother and child on maternal talkativeness

Mothers differ in how much they talk to their young children. The present study asked what processes occurring in mother—child conversation might contribute to differences among mothers in the amount of speech that they produce. The present study also asked what discourse processes might explain previously observed associations between maternal education and the amount of talk mothers address to their children. The database consisted of transcripts of dyadic mealtime conversations between 63 mothers and their 1½‐ to 2‐year‐old children: 30 mothers were high‐school‐educated; 33 mothers were college‐educated. The results suggested that differences in the amount that mothers talk to their children are a function of both characteristics of mothers’ language use and characteristics of their children's conversational participation. The mothers who talked more to their children more frequently produced multiple utterances on a single topic, and this feature of language use was associated with maternal education. However, the amount that the mothers talked to their children was more sensitive to differences in their children's participation than it was to differences in their own language use. Mothers who talked more to their children had children who talked more and who more frequently continued topics in their mothers’ speech.