Psychology Commons^™

Conversational Patterns In Late Talkers At Age 3, Leslie Rescorla, Arlita Bascome, Jarlette Lampard, Norah Feeny

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Topic choice, topic synchrony, and utterance function during mother-child play sessions at age 3 were examined in 32 late talkers (identified at 24 to 31 months) and 21 comparison children, matched at intake on age, SES, and nonverbal ability. At age 3, late talkers bad significantly lower MLUs and IPSyn scores than comparison children. Late talkers and comparison children did not differ in number of utterances, topic initiation, topic synchrony, use of commands, reactions to commands, or conversational fillers. However, late talkers asked significantly fewer questions, provided fewer answers to maternal questions, made fewer declarative statements, and were less likely …