Representational demands in mothers' talk to preschool children in two contexts: picture book reading and a modelling task

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Abstract
Shared book reading is considered to be an influential factor in language and literacy development and has been associated with more complex and demanding forms of tutorial language use. The present study seeks to examine mothers' discourse in joint picture book reading in terms of the level of representational demand which it places on the child, that is the extent to which it requires the child to engage in abstract thought. This was compared with the language used in another interactive, but more product oriented task, modelling a clown using play-doh. Twenty-four mother child dyads (in which the mean age of the children was 4;2) were videotaped while engaged on these tasks and the conversation was analysed for representational demand (levels of abstraction), interactive features and communicative function. The mother's conversation was found to be at a higher level of abstraction in reading than in play-doh modelling. The accuracy of child responses to high level requests for information was superior for reading, while responses to low level requests were similar in both situations. The interactive categories were more utterance-based and less attention-based than in the modelling task.

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