ERIC Number: EJ1077856
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Nov
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Mothers' Labeling Responses to Infants' Gestures Predict Vocabulary Outcomes
Olson, Janet; Masur, Elise Frank
Journal of Child Language, v42 n6 p1289-1311 Nov 2015
Twenty-nine infants aged 1;1 and their mothers were videotaped while interacting with toys for 18 minutes. Six experimental stimuli were presented to elicit infant communicative bids in two communicative intent contexts--proto-declarative and proto-imperative. Mothers' verbal responses to infants' gestural and non-gestural communicative bids were coded for object and action labels. Relations between maternal labeling responses and infants' vocabularies at 1;1 and 1;5 were examined. Mothers' labeling responses to infants' gestural communicative bids were concurrently and predictively related to infants' vocabularies, whereas responses to non-gestural communicative bids were not. Mothers' object labeling following gestures in the proto-declarative context mediated the association from infants' gesturing in the proto-declarative context to concurrent noun lexicons and was the strongest predictor of subsequent noun lexicons. Mothers' action labeling after infants' gestural bids in the proto-imperative context predicted infants' acquisition of action words at 1;5. Findings show that mothers' responsive labeling explain specific relations between infants' gestures and their vocabulary development.
Descriptors: Child Language, Infants, Mothers, Labeling (of Persons), Video Technology, Toys, Nonverbal Communication, Predictor Variables, Vocabulary Development, Language Acquisition, Experiments, Stimuli, Intention, Coding, Interrater Reliability, Expressive Language, Receptive Language, Nouns, Regression (Statistics)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A