How Mothers Talk with 12-, 18-, and 24-Month-Old Infants at Home: The Role of Activity Context and Culture

The goal of the study was to examine what kinds of activities mothers and their 12-, 18-, and 24-month-old infants did at home, and how mothers diversified their talk to support their children’s participation in these activities (n = 33 dyads, majority white and middle class). Data included naturalistic home observations and video-cued interviews. The analysis focused on three activities mothers and infants spontaneously did together during the home observations: object play, book reading, and household endeavors. Linear mixed-effects models found age by activity type interaction effects for proportions of mothers’ referential statements and mind state questions. There was a marginal main effect of age for the proportion of pedagogical questions. These results suggest that age and activity context play a joint role in how mothers communicate with their young children in everyday learning opportunities. In addition, qualitative themes from the video-cued interviews highlighted how mothers themselves thought about talking with young children in different activities. The interview themes were consistent with patterns in the quantitative data as well as prior research on parental ethnotheories. Findings contribute to the existing body of work highlighting the diversity of ways caregivers talk with their young children to help them participate in everyday activities.