Child language with mother and with stranger at home and in the laboratory: a methodological study.

This methodological study in 33 two-year-olds shows that child speech (total utterances, word roots, MLU) occurs at about the same level in different settings (the familiar home vs. the unfamiliar laboratory), but that children speak more and in more differentiated ways with different people (mother vs. stranger). Child speech also shows significant short-term stability. Girls use more different word roots and speak in longer utterances than do boys. In spontaneous child speech, cross-context generalizations appear warranted, but they also depend on conversational partner and gender of child.

Representational abilities and the hearing status of child/mother dyads.

Two representational abilities, expressive and receptive language and symbolic play, were assessed in multiple formats in hearing and deaf 2-year-old children of hearing and deaf mothers. Based on maternal report, hearing children of hearing and deaf mothers produced more words than deaf children of hearing mothers, hearing children of hearing mothers more words than deaf children of deaf mothers, and deaf children of deaf mothers more words than deaf children of hearing mothers. Based on experimenter assessments, hearing children in both groups produced and comprehended more words than deaf children in both groups. By contrast, no differences emerged among these groups in child solitary symbolic play or in child-initiated or mother-initiated child collaborative symbolic play; all groups also increased equivalently in symbolic play between solitary and collaborative play. Representational language and symbolic play were unrelated in hearing children of hearing mothers and in deaf children of deaf mothers, but the 2 abilities were associated in children in the 2 child/mother mismatched hearing status groups. These findings are placed in the context of a proposed developing modularity of verbal and nonverbal symbol systems, and the implications of hearing status in communicative exchanges between children and their mothers in diverse hearing and deaf dyads are explored.

Play in two societies: pervasiveness of process, specificity of structure.

The present study compared Argentine (N = 39) and U.S. (N = 43) children and their mothers on exploratory, symbolic, and social play and interaction when children were 20 months of age. Patterns of cultural similarity and difference emerged. In both cultures, boys engaged in more exploratory play than girls, and girls engaged in more symbolic play than boys; mothers of boys engaged in more exploratory play than mothers of girls, and mothers of girls engaged in more symbolic play than mothers of boys. Moreover, in both cultures, individual variation in children's exploratory and symbolic play was specifically associated with individual variation in mothers' exploratory and symbolic play, respectively. Between cultures, U.S. children and their mothers engaged in more exploratory play, whereas Argentine children and their mothers engaged in more symbolic play. Moreover, Argentine mothers exceeded U.S. mothers in social play and verbal praise of their children. During an early period of mental and social growth, general developmental processes in play may be pervasive, but dyadic and cultural structures are apparently specific. Overall, Argentine and U.S. dyads utilized different modes of exploration, representation, and interaction--emphasizing "other-directed" acts of pretense versus "functional" and "combinatorial" exploration, for example--and these individual and dyadic allocentric versus idiocentric stresses accord with larger cultural concerns of collectivism versus individualism in the two societies.

Vocabulary competence in early childhood: measurement, latent construct, and predictive validity.

We systematically examined relations among 6 measures of child language derived from 3 sources, including observations of the child's speech with mother, experimenter assessments, and maternal reports. A total of 184 20-month-olds and their mothers contributed complete information about child language comprehension and expression. Correlations of child language measures with socioeconomic status and maternal education were accounted for, as were correlations of child language measures with mothers' verbal intelligence, maternal report measures with mothers' tendency to respond in a socially desirable fashion, and experimenter assessments with child social competence. Structural equation modeling supported (1) strong relations among child language measures derived from observations of the child's speech with mother, experimenter assessments, and maternal reports; (2) the loading of multiple measures of child language from different sources on a single latent construct of vocabulary competence; and (3) the predictive validity of the vocabulary competence latent variable at 20 months, as well as receptive vocabulary specifically, for both verbal and performance IQ (verbal better than performance) at 48 months. Neither an index of child monologing (a nonvocabulary language measure) nor symbolic play (a nonlinguistic representational measure) covaried with vocabulary competence. Girls consistently outperformed boys on individual language measures, but no differences emerged in any model in the fit for boys and girls.

A cross-national study of self-evaluations and attributions in parenting: Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, and the United States.

This study investigated and compared ideas about parenting in Argentine, Belgian, French, Israeli, Italian, Japanese, and U.S. mothers of 20-month-olds. Mothers evaluated their competence, satisfaction, investment, and role balance in parenting and rated attributions of successes and failures in 7 parenting tasks to their own ability, effort, or mood, to difficulty of the task, or to child behavior. Few cross-cultural similarities emerged; rather, systematic culture effects for both self-evaluations and attributions were common, such as varying degrees of competence and satisfaction in parenting, and these effects are interpreted in terms of specific cultural proclivities and emphases. Child gender was not an influential factor. Parents' self-evaluations and attributions help to explain how and why parents parent and provide further insight into the broader cultural contexts of children's development.

Solitary and collaborative pretense play in early childhood: sources of individual variation in the development of representational competence.

This study evaluates sources of individual variation in child pretense play as an expression of emerging mental representation. Family sociodemographic characteristics, maternal personological characteristics, and maternal affective and cognitive play behaviors, as well as children's gender, language competence, and play, were examined simultaneously. Naturalistic child solitary play and child collaborative play with mother were videorecorded in 141 20-month-olds. Child solitary play, child-initiated and mother-initiated collaborative play with mother, and maternal demonstrations and solicitations of play were then coded into nonsymbolic and symbolic acts. Zero-order relations obtained between child play and, respectively, child gender and language, family SES, and maternal verbal intelligence, personality, physical affection, and play demonstrations and solicitations. Structural equation modeling supported the following unique predictive relations: Child language and mothers' symbolic play positively influenced child collaborative play, and child gender and mothers' verbal intelligence predicted child solitary play. Child gender and mothers' verbal intelligence and physical affection influenced mothers' play and so influenced child collaborative play indirectly. The cognitive advantages of child play and maternal influences on child play are placed in an adaptive parenting framework.

Stability of emotion experiences and their relations to traits of personality.

The article presents a theoretical framework for studying emotion-personality relations and an empirical study of the stability of 88 normal middle-class mothers' emotion experiences and their relations to personality during the 3 years after childbirth. Ss completed the Differential Emotions Scale (DES), Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire, Jackson's Personality Research Form, and Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale. The DES demonstrated stability over 3 years. There was individual stability despite changes in group means during the postpartum period. Positive emotionality, as well as the discrete emotions of interest, enjoyment, and shyness, predicted Extraversion. Negative emotionality and the discrete negative emotions were significant predictors of Neuroticism. Positive emotionality was inversely related to Neuroticism. There were expectable correlations among specific emotions and primary traits of personality.

Emotional determinants of infant-mother attachment.

The present study examined the assumption that emotion-related characteristics of mothers and infants contribute to the development of infant-mother attachment in the first year of life. Mothers' emotion and personality characteristics were assessed with expressive-behavior ratings and self-report scales. Infant characteristics were measured by emotion and temperament questionnaires (mother report) and objective coding of facial expressions of emotions. Attachment classifications were determined by means of the Strange Situation procedure, and a continuous-variable index of attachment security was derived by a discriminant function procedure. Mothers' emotion experiences, expressive behaviors, and personality traits were significant predictors of the level of security of the infant-mother attachment. Infants' expressive and temperamental characteristics as rated by their mothers were also significant predictors of attachment security.

Abusive and nonabusive mothers' ability to identify general and specific emotion signals of infants.

Slides depicting infants in 7 different emotion states were shown to 20 abusive mothers and to 20 matched, nonabusive mothers. The ability of these subjects to identify general emotional affect (positive and negative) and specific emotion signals was tested. Results indicated that abusive mothers were more likely than the comparison group to incorrectly identify specific emotion signals and to label negative affect as positive.

The negative social network: when friends are foes.

In this study, three factors appear to influence significantly whether a child in foster care would be returned to the parent. The factors proved to be the number of persons in the parent's home, the number of friends in the neighborhood, and the frequency with which the parent saw those friends.