Socio-cultural differences and the adjustment of mothersʹ speech to their childrenʹs cognitive and language comprehension skills

This study compares the ways in which mothers with two different levels of education adjust to their 3-to-5 year-old childrenʹs cognitive and language comprehension skills when engaged in different tasks, such as doing jigsaw puzzles, seriation and laying a table. The children were divided into groups with a low and a high level of development, as measured by Ravenʹs Matrices and the Reynell Language Comprehension Scale. Using Wertschʹs model [Wertsch J. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of the mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press] as our basis, we analysed the cognitive demands contained in the mothersʹ speech (abbreviation and referential perspective). The results indicated that mothers of both educational levels adjusted their speech to their childrenʹs level of development. However, more educated mothers were more demanding and challenging with both low- and high-skilled children, using more abbreviated directives and a higher level of referential expressions. There were small differences between the task effects on the groups.