Mothers’ Use of Gestures and their Relationship to Children’s Lexical Production

This study examines the relationship between mothers’ use of gestures and the lexical production of their children, measured in a joint book-reading task. Fifteen mother-child dyads participated, all monolingual native speakers of Mexican Spanish. Children were boys and girls with typical development, aged 48 months. Each reading session was videotaped and analyzed to calculate the gestural production of mothers and the lexical production of children. The results showed a significant positive correlation between the number of mothers’ gestures and the number of distinct words used by the children. Mothers’ gestural communication was related to the size of the vocabulary children produced in joint book-reading.

Active Music Making Facilitates Prosocial Behaviour in 18-month-old Children

Whenever we celebrate in a group, music and dance are usually part of it. Music making is a highly social activity and even listening to recorded music in a group still gives us a sense of feeling as a unit. Recently, studies have shown that joint music making promotes prosocial feelings and behaviour in children and preschoolers. Active music making led to more prosocial behaviour than a similar non-musical activity. Until now, however, the impact of joint active music making on prosociality has not been studied in infants. Only the effect of passive bouncing to the beat has been studied so far. Therefore, in the current study we investigated whether the joint activity of music making in a natural multimodal way can evoke prosocial behaviour in infants. In our study, 50 18-month-olds were randomly assigned to one of three groups: active music, passive music or non-musical activity (joint book reading). Afterwards, we measured helping behaviour towards the experimenter. We found that joint music making led to more helping behaviour than listening to music or joint book reading, indicating that the prosocial effect of joint music making arises even in 18-month-olds.

A longitudinal study of maternal interaction strategies during joint book-reading in Taiwan

This longitudinal study examines change in maternal interaction strategies in Taiwanese mothers across time, and the synchronic and diachronic relationships between maternal interaction strategies and children's language and early literacy skills. Forty-two mother–child dyads participated in this study. Their interactions during joint book-reading were tape-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed when the children were fourteen, twenty-six, and thirty-six months of age. The children received a battery of language and early literacy tests when they were thirty-six months old. Findings showed that Taiwanese mothers adjusted their use of interaction strategies as their children grew. Maternal use of description, performance, prediction inference, and print-related talk were positively correlated with their children's language and literacy skills. Significant negative correlations were found between use of task-behavioral regulation strategy and text reading in mothers and their children's language performance. This study suggests that age-appropriate interaction strategies are important for children's language and early literacy development.

Mother–child talk during joint book reading in two social classes in Taiwan: Interaction strategies and information types

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to understand mother–child book-reading interactions in different socioeconomic classes in Taiwan. Two groups of 16 mothers and their 3-year-old children, one from upper-middle socioeconomic backgrounds and the other from low-income families, participated in this study. Each dyad was visited at home, and mothers were asked to read a book with their children. Interactions during joint book reading were tape-recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed using the Child Data Exchange System. The results showed that mothers from the upper middle class tended to encourage children to narrate the story, ask open-ended questions, and discuss nonimmediate information, while the low-income mothers tended to take book reading as their responsibility and required their children to be attentive. Educational implications and suggestions for further research were discussed.