Child Language Teaching and Therapy 21,2 (2005); pp. 107–122
Quantity and quality of parental language input to late-talking toddlers during play Debra C Vigil University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA Jennifer Hodges Washoe County School District, Reno, NV, USA and Thomas Klee University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle, UK
Abstract This study compared the language behaviours of parents of toddlers with language delay (LD) and language of parents of typically developing toddlers (LN). Results indicate that parents of children with a language delay and children with normal language produced comparable amounts of linguistic input, but differed on some qualitative measures. Parents of children with normal language used more responses, expansions and self-directed speech than parents of toddlers with language delay. Parents may adjust their conversational style to the communicative ability of their children. These results reinforce language behaviours taught in parent training programmes.
In parent training programmes for children with language delay, parents are taught to facilitate their children’s language growth by using specific features such as imitations, expansions=recasts, slower rate of speech and simplified grammatical complexity (Girolametto et al., 1996; Kaiser et al., 1992; Weistuch et al., 1991). This is based on the premise that parents are very aware of their children’s language abilities (Girolametto et al., 1999). Parents may adjust their communicative behaviours to facilitate conversation and compensate for their child’s passive conversational ability (Conti-Ramsden, 1990). Tannock
Address for correspondence: Debra C Vigil, University of Nevada, School of Medicine, Mark J. Redfield Bldg=152, Reno, NV 89557, USA. E-mail:
[email protected] # 2005 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd
10.1191=0265659005ct284oa
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and Giralametto (1992) suggest that there is an ‘idiosyncratic feedback cycle’ in which the toddler’s language delay influences the parents and vice versa. It is thought that as part of this feedback loop, the toddler’s language delay influences the parent to provide less than ideal input as a direct result of the parent attempting to compensate for the child’s deficits (Tannock and Girolametto, 1992; Whitehurst et al., 1988). Tannock and Girolametto (1992) describe the interaction styles of caretakers of children with language delay as: . . . a continual cycle of inadequate feedback loops (that occur) between child and caregiver. The difficulties these children have in structuring and organizing their environment due to intrinsic factors, such as attentional, memory or other processing deficits, lead them to provide inadequate feedback to their caregivers. In turn, these ambiguous cues prompt adults to use a pattern of interactive techniques that may compound the child’s difficulties and be less than optimal for language acquisition. (Tannock and Girolametto, 1992: 54) This is important with regard to the present research, because the aforementioned studies suggest that mothers of children with language delay do interact differently with their late-talking toddlers than do mothers of children with normal language. Additionally, it raises the question of whether these caregivers are responding to a lack of language or lack of intent on the part of the child. Maternal responsivity has been discussed in the literature as one of the major differences between mothers of typically developing toddlers and toddlers with a language delay. Responsivity (which includes imitating, expanding and interpreting) refers to speech that is in response to the child’s ‘plan of the moment’ and reduces ‘contextual ambiguity, provides redundancy and increases the saliency of the input . . .’ (Girolametto et al., 1999: 365). Responsive speech models language for the child so that the child can more readily understand the intended message (Girolametto et al., 1999). A major difference between mothers of children with language delay and mothers of children with normal language skills is that mothers of children with language delay appear to be less responsive to their children’s speech and give less feedback to their children (Petersen and Sherrod, 1982). These authors show that almost one-third of maternal utterances were not appropriate to the activity in which the language-delayed child was engaged and were semantically unrelated to the child’s preceding utterance. When comparing input to mean length of utterance (MLU) matched children with normal language (mean age 2;3) and children with language
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impairment (mean age 4;2), Conti-Ramsden (1990) found that mothers of children with language impairment initiated more and produced less complex recasts, but with regard to simple recasts and continuations, there was no difference between the two groups. When analysing the function of the simple recasts and continuations however, differences emerged. Mothers of children with language impairment used simple recasts and continuations in the function of meaning illocutions in the form of requestives, assertives and directives to request and assert, while mothers of children with normal language used the recasts and continuations in the function of cohesion illocutions in the form of responsives and regulatives to acknowledge and request clarification. Conti-Ramsden suggests that the function of the language input between mothers of children with normal language and children with language impairment may be the aspect that is different. In another study by Conti-Ramsden, Hutcheson and Grove (1995) comparing input of recasts of both mothers and fathers to MLU-matched children with specific language impairment (SLI; age range 3;9–6;10), unaffected siblings (age range 2;0–3;3) and a group of children with normal language (age range 1;10–3;1) it was found that parents of children with SLI use fewer simple recasts than do parents of children with normal language. Furthermore, it was found that parents used the recasts with the children with normal language after an interactive utterance produced by the child, whereas parents of children with language impairment responded with a simple recast after the child produced a responsive utterance. While these studies have shown that there are differences between the way parents of children with different language abilities interact, other studies have shown that there are no differences. The study most closely related to the age group of the present study is by Paul and Elwood (1991). They compared the language input to children with slow expressive language development (SELD) and children with normal language between the ages of 20 and 34 months. The criteria used for SELD was by parental report using Rescorla’s Language Development Survey (1989) indicating that the child ‘used less than 50 different words at 20–33 months or did not use any two-word combinations’ (p. 983). No differences were found between the two groups in maternal input in areas involving syntax, pragmatic function, topic management and lexical contingency. There was a difference in the number of expansions and extensions produced by the mothers, but when these were compared proportionally to the number of opportunities that the mothers had, based on the amount of language produced by the children, there were no differences between the two groups. In a study comparing late-talkers and age-matched peers (ages 24–31 months), Rescorla and Fechnay (1996) examined mothers’ social interaction
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skills with their children that included social cues and synchrony. Synchrony was defined as maintaining topic with the previous turn and social cues included verbal and nonverbal cues to maintain the interaction. Results showed no differences between mothers of the late-talking toddlers and mothers of children with normal language in either the use of social cues or synchronicity. However, correlations were found between mothers of latetalking children and conversational styles of ‘control’ (commands and test and request questions) and ‘conversation’ (real questions and declaratives). Rescorla and Fechnay suggested that the mothers of late-talking children may adopt a strategy of using ‘high constraint’ speech acts to direct the child or follow the child’s lead with few demands to foster communication and play. In summary, there appears to be no consensus with regard to whether or not parents interact differently with children with language delay and those with normal language. There is some evidence that caregiver’s language does affect their child’s language ability, while other research finds no correlation. Yet, the intervention literature recommends that parents make changes to their language. The present study is important for two reasons. First, even though there is conflicting research, parent training programmes teach parents to increase communicative behaviours because there is research suggesting that adjusting their language facilitates a child’s language development (Girolametto et al., 1996; 1999). For example, the Hanen programme suggests that a parent should imitate a child’s utterance to let the child know that the parent is interested in what the child is doing. Another behaviour taught to parents is to interpret a child’s utterance by adding words to an utterance produced by the child. For instance a child can say ‘uh oh’ if s=he sees a broken cup; then the parent interprets by saying ‘Uh oh, the cup broke’ (Manolsen, 1992). Secondly, there is the suggestion in the literature that parents of late-talking children adopt a different style of interaction based on the quality of utterances of their children, which in turn affects the way the parents communicate with a child with a language delay. This raises a question of whether or not the parents of late-talking children use the same features taught in parent training programmes as parents of children with normal language. This study sought to provide data to explore whether parents of children with language delay differ from parents of children with typical language development in naturalistic encounters. It is exploratory in nature and examined whether the facilitative behaviours taught in parent training programmes occur naturalistically and differentially in two groups of children, those with and without language delay.
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Method Participants The participants in this study were a subsample of children in a study conducted by Klee et al. (1998) that was designed to explore the feasibility of screening children’s language development at age 2. Subsequent to screening, 64 children participated in a follow-up assessment to examine the accuracy of screening with measures that included language samples and standardized test scales. Of the children, 90% were from two-parent families. Families ranged from lower middle to upper middle class in socioeconomic status. Over 80% of the parents had a high school diploma and some had university education (68% of the mothers and 58% of the fathers had obtained a university degree). In addition, 60% of the mothers and 95% of the fathers were employed outside the home. The primary language spoken in all the participants’ homes was English. Ninety-six per cent of the parental participants were mothers and the same parent who completed the questionnaires also served as the child’s partner in the parent–child dyads during the language sampling. In Klee et al.’s study, the follow-up evaluation took place, on average, one month after screening. Sixty-four children were fully assessed. The mean age of the children on the first day of follow-up testing was 25.7 months (range: 24–29 months). Audiological screening was conducted either by a certified audiologist or by a supervised graduate student. Assessment included five developmental subtests of the Infant Mullen Scales of Early Learning (Infant MSEL; Mullen, 1989). The Infant MSEL is standardized and normreferenced. The subtests administered to the children included the following: Gross Motor Base (GMB); Visual Receptive Organization (VRO), which assesses visual–spatial organization and memory; Visual Expressive Organization (VEO), which assesses fine motor development; Language Receptive Organization (LRO), which assesses auditory and auditory–visual reception and memory; and Language Expressive Organization (LEO), which assesses communicative verbal abilities (Mullen, 1989). Further analysis of the children’s language was conducted through language sampling. For further detail please refer to the Methods section of the paper by Klee et al. (1998). For the purpose of the present study the children’s language was analysed to differentiate between the two parent groups, those parents of children with a language delay and those parents of children with normal language. The researchers for the present study were unaware of the outcome of Klee et al.’s study at the time of the data analysis for the present study. The sample size
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measures for the children are presented in Table 1. The children with language delay presented almost half the number of utterances (mean 65.7; range 16– 165) compared with the children with normal language (mean 121.16; range 50–237). Table 1 outlines language measure comparison of the 29 children in this sample. Analysis shows a significant difference between children with normal language abilities and children with language delay in the variables analysed: parent report of vocabulary using the LDS (Rescorla, 1989), p < 0.0005; receptive language measured by Mullens LRO (1989), p < 0.013; expressive language measured by Mullens LEO (1989), p < 0.0005; MLU in morphemes, p < 0.0000; total number of words p < 0.001. Results show that the subsample of children from the study by Klee et al. analysed in this present study is consistent with previous findings by Klee et al. The same criteria were used for language delay as outlined by Rescorla and used by Klee et al. (1998) in which the child has less than 50 different words or no two-word combinations. Klee et al. (1998) chose to use the term ‘children with language delay’ to differentiate between children who may have an impairment and it simply indicates that the child exhibits language abilities below age expectation. In addition, the children described as ‘language delayed’ in Klee et al.’s study also met the criteria for what others have called ‘late-talkers’. For consistency with the previous publications, the term ‘children with language delay’ will be used. In 28 of the dyads, the mothers interacted with the child, and in one dyad the father interacted with the child. Table 1 Total number of complete and intelligible utterances (means and standard deviations) of present sample (n ¼ 29)
Language normal (n ¼ 19) M Number of utterances analysed Language Development Survey Total vocabulary size Mullen Scales of Early Learning Language Receptive Organization Language Expressive Organization Language Sample Measures Mean length of utterance Total number of words
M
SD
121.16
50.21
65.7
44.7
191.00
80.53
48.40
38.58*
55.42
5.79
47.60
10.07*
49.84
7.75
36.50
4.99*
0.70 47.80
0.49y* 46.47*
1.44 181.47
*p < 0.01; yrange: 0.06–1.76; {range: 0.67–2.23.
SD
Language delay (n ¼ 10)
0.55{ 113.44
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Procedures The participants in the original study were videotaped in a free play setting in a laboratory furnished to resemble a domestic room. The same toys were provided to all of the dyads and parents were told to play with their children as they would at home. The toys consisted of a Playschool farm set and kitchen set and accompanying animals, blocks, plastic food and plates and other age-appropriate toys. The child and one parent were video- and audiorecorded for a period of 20 minutes without any observers present in the room. The first 10 minutes of the videotaped interaction were included for transcription and coding. Transcription An orthographic transcription on the videotaped language sample was completed, using a JVC HI FI Super VHS ET videocassette recorder (model JR-S3899U); one researcher and two trained students of speech-language pathology did transcription. The transcription was carried out from videotapes rather than audiotapes to capture the use of nonverbal communication on the part of either the child or the parent. The parents’ speech was transcribed for both grammatical and pragmatic measures. Parent utterances were coded in three broad categories: 1) Grammatical language measures included: Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) in words, total number of utterances and total number of words. 2) Discourse function measured the purpose the utterance served in the conversation. There were three broad categories defined as follows: a) Initiations – any utterance, action, or gesture that is used to start a game, activity, or a new topic of conversation (Ninio and Snow, 1996). b) Responses – an utterance, action or gesture that relates to the same topic as that of the preceding utterance of the conversational partner. This was included for coding based on the premise in parent training programmes that the parent should wait for the child to respond to determine if the child exhibits some type of verbal or nonverbal behaviour that can be interpreted as communicative (Manolson, 1992). c) Self-directed speech – any utterances not directed at another person. This was included because it not only occurs in interactions between parents and their children, but it is taught in parent intervention programmes and defined as self-talk (Manolson, 1992). Although self-talk is actually directed at the child, it is speech that is describing what the parent is doing without placing pressure on the child to respond. Similarly, self-directed speech serves the same function; it
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shows the child how the parent is problem-solving in a situation and providing a scaffold for language while not placing pressure on the child to generate a response. d) Number of turns in the conversation – similar to Responses, this was included for coding based on the premise in parent training programmes that the parent should wait for the child to respond and then take a turn. e) Proportion of responses to child’s initiations – in parent training programmes parents are taught to follow a child’s communicative lead. As with Responses, the parents are directed to wait for the child to initiate verbally as well as nonverbally, then the parents can respond to that initiation. 3) Behavioural or pragmatic functions: a) Questions – requires the presences of interrogative syntax and=or intonation cues such as rising intonation. b) Gestures – include physical actions where visible body action has been organized in such a way as to be taken as communicatively intentional. c) Labelling – refers to an utterance that fulfils the sole purpose of identifying the object. d) Descriptives – any utterance that is sentence-like in structure and serves the purpose of commenting on the object. e) Behavioural Directives – utterances that direct behaviour, for example, verbalizations that elicit or constrain the physical behaviour of the infant by commanding, requesting or encouraging the infant to do or desist from doing something. The following three behavioural functions were coded only in the response category as these can only occur as a response to a child’s previous utterance: a) Interpretations – parent interprets the child’s intended message using the context as a clue in which a single word or several words are produced based on contextual cues. b) Expansions – repetition of the child’s preceding word approximation or verbalization and completes the utterance by adding one or more morphemes or words. c) Imitations – a repetition of partial or exact imitation of preceding utterance. Interobserver agreement For interobserver agreement, 20% of each videotaped language sample was selected at random by a second observer to recode parental behaviours. Training for agreement consisted of reviewing the definitions with the second coder and watching the videotapes together with the researcher.
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The researcher and the second observer then coded a segment of interactions together so that the second observer could learn the coding system. The time required for training was approximately two hours. For an agreement to occur an identical code needed to be identified in each category. For reliability purposes categories were broken down into the following: Category 1, initiation, responses, self-directed speech; Category 2, question, gesture, label, descriptive, behavioural directive, interpretation, expansion, imitation. For statistical agreement, Cohen’s kappa, a chance-corrected measure of agreement (Cohen, 1960) was calculated. The following are the interobserver agreement scores for each category: Category 1, kappa ¼ 0.83; Category 2, kappa ¼ 0.91. This indicates that that interobserver agreement is adequate.
Results Sample size The mean number of utterances used in this analysis was 164.13 (SD 71.77, range 41–272) for the parents of children with a language delay and a mean of 195.26 (SD 84.31, range 79–366) for the parents of children with normal language. Group comparison of parental language measures Student’s t-test was used to compare differences in parental language behaviours when group membership for children was established after coding was complete. Quantitative measures There were no differences found between the parents of children with a language delay and parents of children with normal language in the language analysis variables of MLU in words, total number of utterances and number of words, as shown in Table 2. Qualitative measures Discourse function analysis. Results of the discourse analysis show that there was no significant difference in the number of Initiations produced by parents of children with language delay and parents of children with normal language (Table 3). There was a significant difference between the two groups in the number of Responses ( p ¼ 0.009) and in the Proportion of Responses to Initiations ( p ¼ 0.02). The parents of children with normal language
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Table 2 Quantitative language measures for parents in present sample (n ¼ 29)
Language normal (n ¼ 19)
MLU in words Total utterances No. of words
Language delay (n ¼ 10)
M
SD
M
SD
3.54 195.26 716.84
0.66 84.31 425.38
3.54 164.10 577.60
0.52 71.77 277.79
responded more to the child’s communicative behaviours than the parents of children with language delay and had a greater proportion of responses to initiations. There was a significant difference in the number of turns taken by the parents of children with normal language compared with the parents of children with language delay ( p ¼ 0.01). Further, parents of children with normal language produced more self-directed speech than the parents of children with language delay ( p ¼ 0.02). Pragmatic function analysis. There were no significant differences between the parents of children with language delay and parents of children with normal language in the use of questions, labelling, descriptives, gestures, behavioural directives, interpretations and imitation. Parents of children with normal language produced more Expansions ( p ¼ 0.04) than the parents of children with language delay. Although in Table 4 it appears that the use of gestures might be higher in parents of children with normal language than parents of children with a language delay, statistically it was p ¼ 0.0798. In the cohort with language delay there was one parent who used a gesture once and in the cohort with normal development there were only seven parents out of the 19 who used gestures. Within those seven, one parent used 45% of the gestures.
Table 3 Qualitative language measure: discourse analysis of parent language (n ¼ 29)
Language normal (n ¼ 19)
Initiations Responses Self-directed speech Turns Proportion of responses-toinitiations *p < 0.05, df ¼ 27.
Language delay (n ¼ 10)
M
SD
M
SD
70.57 66.36 0.73 94.95 0.94
24.83 34.54 1.04 38.51 0.82
77.00 32.70 0.10 54.80 0.43
35.44 19.87* 0.31* 34.89* 0.28*
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Table 4 Qualitative language measure: pragmatic analysis of parent language (n ¼ 29)
Language normal (n ¼ 19)
Questions Gestures Labelling Descriptives Behavioural directives Interpretations Expansions Imitations
Language delay (n ¼ 10)
M
SD
M
SD
77.26 3.05 9.11 64.21 13.53 4.53 8.37 1.21
34.60 6.40 5.70 37.85 11.53 4.80 6.63 2.84
61.90 0.10 10.60 56.90 16.60 2.50 3.20 0.90
28.12 0.32 10.24 28.19 10.96 1.78 4.52* 1.45
*p < 0.05, df ¼ 27.
Discussion Parents of children with normal language and parents of children with language delay produced similar language in the sample in terms of number of utterances, number of words and MLU in words. From this we can conclude that the children in each group were offered similar quantities of language. However, there were differences in aspects of conversational discourse. Parents of children with normal language responded more to their children and took more conversational turns than parents of children with language delay. A significant difference was found in the number of responses to the toddlers between parents of children with language delay and parents of children with normal language. While the results of this study are not intended to imply a causal relationship between parental interaction styles and the children’s language development, this study suggests that a relationship between the two exists. This relationship is suggested in the pragmatic language of the parents when interacting with their toddlers. Specifically, parents of children with language delay responded less often than parents of children with normally developing language skills. This is true in terms of the overall responses produced by the parents, as well as in terms of the proportion of responses to initiations. It does not come as a surprise that parents of children with language delay will respond less often to their children than parents of children with normal language. The more the child talks, the more utterances there are to which the parent can respond. The children with language delay in this study were found to produce half as many utterances than the typically developing children. However, what is of interest is the fact that the parents of children with
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language delay initiated proportionately more often than they responded. Parents of children with normal language had proportionately fewer initiations compared with responses, suggesting that parents of children with normal language are actively engaged in a reciprocal conversation with their children and following the child’s lead during the course of the conversation. It appears as though parents of children with language delay do not fall into this same pattern; rather than responding to what their children are saying and maintaining the same topic that the children have already initiated, parents of children with language delay are more likely to introduce a new topic. It may be that the parents are making an effort to engage their child in more talk by introducing new topics. However, this raises the question of why the parents would change the topic of conversation rather than make a comment about what the child is already doing. It could be that the parents find it easier to introduce a new topic because they might have already tried to respond to what the child is doing and the child did not respond or they might think that the child has exhausted the ability to comment on the activity, resulting in a change of topic. Either way, a new topic was introduced, which increases the number of times a topic is changed. This is what Tannock and Girolametto (1992) have suggested as the ‘inadequate feedback loop’. The children may be having some difficulty with organizing their play or making an attempt to process what is occurring in the activity. The child may need more time to sort out what is occurring and what is being said by the parent. In the meantime, the parent expects a response to their conversational attempts and becomes anxious because s=he wants the child to produce some language and then changes the topic in an attempt to get the child to talk more, which then compounds the problem. It is diverting the child from their focus of attention and then the child has to re-orient to another topic for which s=he may require more time. This then becomes a cycle in which the child needs more time, but the parent continually changes the topic in an attempt to get the child to talk. The number of responses of the parents in unstructured conversations with their children was found to be a major measure of importance in a study by Yoder and Warren (1998). They showed that whether or not a child generalizes intentional communication outside of the clinic depends less upon a therapist in an intervention setting than it does upon how often the mother responds to the child’s pre-intentional and intentional communicative acts. The findings in the present study support Yoder and Warren’s (1998) conclusions that parents of children with language delay responded significantly less than the parents of children with normal language to the child’s intended message and as seen by the proportion of initiations to responses. The initiation code in these data specifically indicated that a new topic was to be introduced for it to be
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considered an initiation. Therefore, it appears that parents of children with language delay are changing topics more often than parents of children with normal language and, by implication, are not following the child’s lead as much. Further, Girolametto et al. (1999) demonstrated that the amount the mother engages in responses to the child’s communicative attempts is highly correlated with the number of words in the child’s lexicon. Taking the findings from Girolametto et al.’s (1999) study into account, the results of this study suggest that this is the case. The parents of children with language delay responded less overall and, even more importantly, responded proportionately less than the parents of children with normal language. Parents of children with normal language also expanded a greater number of their children’s utterances than parents of children with language delay, providing linguistic scaffolding for subsequent language development. These results are similar to the findings by Conti-Ramsden (1990), who found that mothers of children with language impairment used less complex recasts. To some extent this is similar to the findings by Rescorla and Fechnay (1996) that found a correlation between a composite of a ‘controlling’ style of mothers of late-talking children with synchrony and play extensions. Those mothers of late-talking children who use frequent commands, indirect requests and test questions may not be following a child’s lead and extending their own play using the child’s own topic. They are therefore not expanding on the child’s utterance. Similarly, Conti-Ramsden found that mothers of children with language impairment used simple recasts and continuations in the form of requestives, assertives and directives. What is of interest in the present study is whether or not parents of children with normal language skills use these specific behaviours more often than parents of children with language delay when interacting with their young children prior to any intervention. A significant difference in the use of these behaviours between parents of children with language delay and parents of children with normal language skills may indicate that parents of children with language delay are amending their linguistic behaviours as early as 24 months of age. This would suggest that parents of young toddlers are aware of the language skills of their children and attempt to modify their linguistic behaviours as a result, as suggested by Tannock and Girolametto (1992), with the ‘idiosyncratic feedback cycle’. In regard to the parental use of expansions, the results of this study are similar to those of Girolametto et al. (1999). Parents of children with normally developing language skills expanded significantly more often upon the language of their children than parents of children with language delay. Perhaps this is because parents of children with normal language have more utterances to which they can respond. However, parents of children with
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language delay did have utterances to which they could respond and expand upon. It would then appear that parents of children with language delay are generally less responsive to those utterances that the child is producing, in that they are not responding to the child by expanding upon what the child is actually talking about. This would then indicate, as shown by the results, that parents of children with language delay tend not to follow the child’s topic during the course of an interaction as often as parents of children with normal language do. Interestingly, parents of children with normal language also demonstrated more self-directed speech than parents of children with language delay, although the frequency of this behaviour was very low. That is, they seemed to verbalize their thoughts during the play situation, which may have provided additional opportunities for the child to listen to contextually relevant language without having any pressure to respond. Although the sample size on this was quite small, it does warrant further investigation. This reinforces what Tannock and Girolametto suggest, that the parents may perceive that the child would not be able to understand what they are saying with self-directed speech so they do not see the value in producing language that they otherwise would normally. Other selected variables such as statements, questions, behavioural directives and imitations did not differ significantly between groups.
Implications These results support earlier studies showing that the environment of late talkers is quantitatively similar to that of children with normal language development (Paul and Elwood, 1991; Rescorla and Fechnay, 1996). However, some differences were found on a number of discourse and pragmatic functions. While the design of this study does not allow us to determine whether there is a causal relationship between parents’ conversational styles and the language development of their children, a relationship between the two does exist, suggesting that parents adjust their communication style to the communicative ability of their children. Specifically, parents of the children with language delay did not respond as much to their children, produced fewer expansions and produced less self-directed speech. These behaviours are taught to parents of children with language delay as part of intervention programmes in order to facilitate language development (e.g., Girolametto et al., 1999). More specifically, the Hanen Parent Training Programme (Manolson, 1992) teaches concepts such as expansion, self-talk, turn-taking
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and following a child’s lead. Parents are taught to limit initiations and wait until the child either produces an utterance or uses some nonverbal communication such as a gesture or eye contact in order to respond. The results in this study reinforce these same concepts taught in the Hanen programme. These communicative behaviours were naturally occurring in the interaction between parents and their children who are developing language normally and these were the same behaviours for which the parents of children with language delay exhibited the most difficulty. Further, once these behaviours are taught to parents, their language use changes and facilitates language growth in their children as shown by Girolametto and his colleagues. Acknowledgement This study was completed in partial fulfilment of Jennifer Hodges’ master’s thesis. A portion of this manuscript was presented at the 22nd Annual Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI, 2001.
References Cohen, J. 1960: A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement 20, 37–46. Conti-Ramsden, G. 1990: Maternal recasts and other contingent replies to language-impaired children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 55, 262–74. Conti-Ramsden, G., Hutcheson, G. D. and Grove, J. 1995: Contingency and breakdown: Children with SLI and their conversations with mothers and fathers. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 38, 1290–1302. Girolametto, L., Pearce, P. S. and Weitzman, E. 1996: Interactive focused stimulation for toddlers with expressive vocabulary delays. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 39, 1274–83. Girolametto, L., Weitzman, E., Wiigs, M. and Pearce, P. 1999: The relationship between maternal language measures and language development in toddlers with expressive vocabulary delays. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 8, 364–74. Kaiser, A. P., Yoder, P. J. and Keetz, A. 1992: Evaluating milieu teaching. In Warren, S. and Reichle, J., editors, Causes and effects in communication and language intervention. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Klee, T., Carson, D., Gavin, W., Hall, L., Kent, A. and Reece, S. 1998: Concurrent and predictive validity of an early language screening programme. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 41, 627–41.
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