Topic relations in mother-child conversation

Abstract

The present paper describes developmental changes in the topic relations in mother-child conversation. The data base consisted of five videotaped records of 45-minute sessions of mother-child play. The subjects were three dyads observed once when the children were 1;7, 2;2, and 2;8. The younger two children were observed a second time, six months later. In cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons of the dyads, it was observed that the more linguistically advanced children initiated a greater proportion of conversational topics and also elicited more topic-continuing replies from their mothers. In addition, child responsiveness to maternal speech was greatest when maternal speech continued the topic of the child's prior utterance. The results suggest children's conversational skills influence their own language-learning experiences. Implications for accounts of environ mental contributions to language acquisition are discussed.