Maternal control over conversations with hearing and deaf infants and young children

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Abstract
Mothers talking with their hearing or deaf children aged one to five years were compared on measures of maternal control over conversations and child response to different levels of such control. Groups were matched separately on age and expressive language ability. Maternal input depended upon children's linguistic receptive capacity rather than age or cognitive level, confirming a multi-factor theory of control of maternal input to language learners. Negative correlations were found between maternal repair of deviant child utterances and child initiative and length of turn and positive ones between these maternal behaviours and child misunderstanding. Correlations between mater nal control and child measures were positive when children were beginning to speak, but negative once children were able to contribute more to the exchange.