Language Use in Mother-Child and Mother-Child-Sibling Interactions

JONES, CELESTE PAPPAS, and ADAMSON, LAUREN B. Language Use in Mother-Child and MotherChild-Sibling Interactions. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1987, 58, 356-366. Communication in motherinfant dyads and mother-infant-sibling triads was examined to determine how variations in the number of people and type of activity affect the way language is used by all participants. Homebased videotaped observations were made of 16 firstand 16 later-born children when they were between 18 and 23 months old. All children were observed in 2 activities-free play with toys and picture book reading-with their mothers. Later-borns were observed also with both their mother and preschool-aged older sibling. A coding system was developed to classify all the participants' uses of language. Included were referential, regulative, and categories of language use. Analyses revealed differences in mother's and infant's language use as a function of sibling status, type of activity, and number of participants. In general, later-born infants used more social regulative speech than did firstborns; their mothers used less metalingual speech than did mothers of firstborns; and, inclusion of siblings appeared to magnify these differences for both groups. Of particular interest, mothers' uses were important in predicting observed measures of the infant's linguistic ability.