Mothers', fathers', and siblings' responses to children's language errors: comparing sources of negative evidence

Despite previous work showing that mothers, fathers, and siblings provide negative evidence regarding children's grammatical errors, the role of linguistic input remains controversial. Since most work in this area has concentrated on negative evidence in the mother-child dyad, this study extended prior work by comparing mothers', fathers' and siblings' corrective repetitions to children's errors across different family settings. Fourteen children (2;3) were videotaped interacting with their mothers, fathers, and siblings (4;1) in dyad, triad, and tetrad settings. Analyses revealed that mothers and fathers provided more corrective repetitions than siblings did. Although the size of the setting did not differentiate responding, when specific configurations were examined differences emerged. Analyses of individual families revealed that all children received feedback following syntax errors. These results are discussed in terms of current negative evidence research.