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Mothers respond differently to infants' familiar versus non-familiar verbal imitations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2011

JANET OLSON  and
ELISE FRANK MASUR
JANET OLSON*
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
ELISE FRANK MASUR
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
*
Address for correspondence: Janet Olson, School of Allied Health & Communicative Disorders, Northern Illinois, University, DeKalb, IL 60115. tel: 815-753-1401; fax: 815-753-9123; e-mail: janet@niu.edu
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Abstract

Mothers' verbal responses to their infants' spontaneous imitations of familiar and non-familiar words during naturally occurring interactions were examined in a longitudinal sample observed at 1 ; 1, 1 ; 5 and 1 ; 9. Maternal responses to both familiar and non-familiar imitations exhibited structural characteristics likely to be facilitative of early word learning, including shorter and single-word utterances and reproductions of imitated words in sentence-final position. Mothers also responded differentially to infants' non-familiar versus familiar imitations. Mothers produced more return imitations and more exact repetitions, providing an extra exemplar, following infants' imitations of non-familiar words. The familiar words infants imitated were more likely to receive the more complex expanded and reduced+expanded return imitations. Results suggest mothers' responses to infants' verbal imitations could serve as a mechanism for facilitating language acquisition.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , September 2012 , pp. 731 - 752
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by NICHD grant #HD51607 to the second author. Portions of the results were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver, April 2009, and at the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, New Orleans, November 2009. The authors thank Doreen Eichorst for assistance coding, Jihee Hong for assistance managing data, and the participating infants and mothers.

References

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