Conversations with mothers and siblings: young children's semantic and conceptual development

This study compared teaching and learning measures of 16 mother-child and sibling dyads playing a picture categorization game. Target children (mean age = 3 years 11 months) participated in 2 separate sessions, 1 with their mother and 1 with their older sibling (mean age = 6 years 11 months). Although siblings' teaching styles directed target children to make the correct choices, mothers provided information to help target children make choices on their own. Mothers labeled objects and categories more than siblings. Although target children scored higher with siblings than with mothers, this was because siblings categorized about half of the pictures themselves. Target children labeled objects and categories more with mothers than with siblings. These findings suggest important differences in how mothers and siblings interpreted the goals of the task, offering target children different teaching styles from which to learn.