Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Department of Economy, Universitas Mercatorum, Rome, Italy.
J Child Lang. 2022 Jul;49(4):635-660. doi: 10.1017/S0305000920000835. Epub 2021 Jun 21.
The present study aimed at investigating the contextual stability, the contextual continuity and the concurrent associations between maternal measures (general language, communicative functions and mind-mindedness) and child measures (total number of word types and tokens) in two different contexts, free-play and mealtime. To this purpose, the interactions occurring between 25 mothers and their 16-month-old children in each context were video-recorded, transcribed and later coded for the selected measures. Significant contextual stability was observed in the mothers' production of general language measures (total number of utterances, total number of words and MLU), in the children's production of word types and tokens, and in some communicative functions (Tutorial, Control and Asynchronous). No contextual stability was found for the mothers' production of attuned mind-related comments. For continuity, both mothers and children produced more utterances and words in the free-play than in the mealtime context; the production of attuned mind-related comments and the use of the Control function were also more frequent in the free-play context. Lastly, the analysis of the concurrent correlations indicated that, especially in the mealtime context, the number of words produced by children was positively associated with the number of words produced by mothers and by their use of the Tutorial and Didactic functions, but negatively associated with their use of the Control function. The mothers' production of attuned mind-related comments bore no relation with children's expressive language. Similarities and differences with previous findings are discussed.
本研究旨在探讨在两个不同情境（自由游戏和用餐时间）中，母亲的测量指标（一般语言、交际功能和心智解读）与儿童的测量指标（总词汇量和词汇量）之间的语境稳定性、语境连续性以及并发关联。为此，在每个情境下，视频记录了 25 位母亲及其 16 个月大的孩子之间的互动，然后对选定的指标进行转录和编码。在母亲的一般语言指标（总话语数、总词汇数和 MLU）、儿童的词汇类型和词汇量以及一些交际功能（指导、控制和异步）的产生中，观察到了显著的语境稳定性。然而，在母亲产生共鸣的与心智相关的评论方面，没有发现语境稳定性。在连续性方面，母亲和儿童在自由游戏中比在用餐时间中产生了更多的话语和词汇；在自由游戏中，共鸣的与心智相关的评论和控制功能的使用也更为频繁。最后，并发相关性分析表明，特别是在用餐时间中，儿童的词汇量与母亲的词汇量以及她们使用指导和教学功能的频率呈正相关，而与控制功能的使用呈负相关。母亲产生共鸣的与心智相关的评论与儿童的表达性语言没有关系。本文讨论了与以往发现的相似之处和差异。
