Parental Speech to Five-Year-Old Children in a Game-Playing Situation

Abstract

Children in a Game-playing Situation. CmLw DEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 580-582. The speech of fathers and mothers was studied as they played a table game with 5-year-old sons or daughters. Analysis of the data revealed that fathers used more directly controlling language with their children than did mothers, whereas mothers preferred indirectly to directly controlling language. There were also consistent patterns suggesting that the interaction in like-sex (father-son, mother-daughter) dyads was different from that in cross-sex (father-daughter, mother-son) dyads. Parents used more complex language with cross-sex children, whereas they seemed to initiate play sooner and finished sooner with like-sex children. These findings were seen to underscore the need to look at likeand cross-sex dynamics in studies of linguistic input to children.