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Published on: April 19, 2017
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Maternal Question Use Relates to Syntactic Skills in 5- to 7-Year-Old Children.
Grace Buckalew1,2, Alexus G Ramirez1,3, Julie M Schneider1,4
1University of Delaware, Newark.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research : JSLHR
|October 30, 2024
Summary
Mothers asking wh-questions, which seek information, are linked to better child language development. These questions encourage children to use more complex sentences, improving their syntactic skills.
Area of Science:
- Child language development
- Developmental linguistics
- Psycholinguistics
Background:
- Maternal speech patterns significantly influence child language acquisition.
- The structure and purpose of maternal questions can vary, impacting child responses.
- The relationship between specific question types and children's syntactic development requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the association between mothers' question-asking behaviors and their children's syntactic skills.
- To categorize maternal questions by structure (wh- vs. non-wh-) and purpose (information-seeking, pedagogical, etc.).
- To determine which types of maternal questions are most related to children's concurrent syntactic abilities.
Main Methods:
- Thirty-four mother-child dyads participated in a 15-minute play session.
- Children's syntactic skills were assessed using the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV).
- Maternal questions were analyzed for structure and purpose using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts.
Main Results:
- Non-wh-questions and rhetorical/yes-no questions were most frequent.
- Wh-questions were primarily information-seeking and positively associated with children's syntactic skills.
- Children produced longer utterances in response to mothers' wh-questions.
Conclusions:
- Maternal use of wh-questions supports syntactic skill development in children aged 5-7.
- Wh-questions likely prompt more syntactically complex responses from children.
- This highlights the importance of information-seeking wh-questions in early language development.
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