Vernon-Feagans Lynne, Bratsch-Hines Mary, Reynolds Elizabeth, Willoughby Michael
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Research Triangle Institute.
Child Dev. 2020 Jul;91(4):1098-1115. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13281. Epub 2019 Jul 17.
The maternal language input literature suggests that mothers with more education use a greater quantity and complexity of language with their young children compared to mothers with less education although race and socioeconomic status have been confounded in most studies because of small sample sizes. The current Family Life study included a representative sample of 1,292 children, oversampling for poverty and African American, followed from birth. This study found no race differences within maternal education levels on five measures of maternal language input from 6 to 36 months. Maternal language input variables of number of different words, mean length of utterance and number of wh-questions were partial mediators of the relationship between maternal education and later child language at school age.
母语输入文献表明，与受教育程度较低的母亲相比，受教育程度较高的母亲与幼儿交流时使用的语言数量更多、复杂度更高，不过由于样本量较小，在大多数研究中种族和社会经济地位一直混淆不清。当前的家庭生活研究纳入了1292名儿童的代表性样本，对贫困儿童和非裔美国儿童进行了过度抽样，并从出生起跟踪研究。该研究发现，在6至36个月期间母亲语言输入的五项指标上，不同受教育程度的母亲群体内部不存在种族差异。不同单词数量、平均语句长度和特殊疑问句数量等母亲语言输入变量，是母亲受教育程度与儿童学龄期后期语言能力之间关系的部分中介因素。
