Parental Speech Modification to Young Children

Abstract

Summary The present study compared the speech of fathers and mothers to their young daughters in the age ranges of 19 to 29 months and 32 to 43 months. Verbatim transcripts of audio tape recordings of the verbal interactions of 20 father-daughter dyads and 20 mother-daughter dyads engaged in free play in the family home revealed the degree of parental speech modification to be a function of the age of the child. Both fathers and mothers adjusted certain aspects of their speech relative to child age and displayed very similar patterns of speech adjustment.