Comparing how mothers and teachers talk to children: is it different and does it matter?

Abstract

A number of studies have shown that maternal linguistic input to young mentally handicapped (MH) children and to developmentally normal (DN) children, differs. Whereas mothers of DN children may be the prime providers of the linguistic input, the situation differs for MH children. Many are still at a primitive stage of language development when they start school, and thus teachers as well as mothers are potential language teachers. Despite the suggestion that certain modes of adult input may enhance MH children's language growth, there has been no systematic comparison of mother and teacher input. In this paper, results are given from a study in which maternal and pedagogic input to three pre-school MH children is compared. The children, who were all at the one-word stage, were recorded with their mothers at home and their teachers at school. The adult utterances were examined using (1 ) an analysis based on a descriptive surface grammar and (2) a functional analysis. Results reveal that while there were many similarities between the groups, both group and individual differences exist. The implica tions for professional working with MH children and their parents are discussed.