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Maternal scaffolding in mother-infant games and its relationship to language development: a longitudinal study

Hôpital Marie Enfant

Carolyn Cronk

Universite de Montréal

Christine Gourde

Universite de Montréal

This study explored the support, both verbal and non-verbal, mothers offer to their infants as they play games together and sought to determine how this support might play a role in the development of both the linguistic and game-playing abilities of the infants. Twenty-five mothers were videotaped as they played peek-a-boo and ball with their infants when they were 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 24 months old. A language test was administered at the end of each session. Nine maternal scaffolding behaviours were identified and analysed in order to determine how they vary in the two games and with increasing age of the infants. Mothers were found to use different scaffolding behaviours as a function of the game at hand. The amount and type of scaffolding used varied with the children's age as well. With the exception of the 6-month session, there was a consistently high use of scaffolding through out the time span of the study. Contrary to what Bruner (1983) suggests, no strong relationship between maternal scaffolding behaviours and infant language level was found. Some interpretations are offered for the lack of direct correlation between language development and such well-adapted support of social game-playing.

First Language, Vol. 15, No. 45, 339-355 (1995)
DOI: 10.1177/014272379501504505


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