Abstract
This qualitative study examined child age and gender variations in mothers' question types and children's responses to these questions. The purpose of this study was to explore mothers' use of questions as a means to scaffold their children's conversational competence as well as keeping their children engaged during storytelling. A sample of 24 children, aged 2.5 and 4.5 years, and their mothers was drawn from an existing data set involving videotaped storytelling sessions with a Lego set. Each age group consisted of six girls and six boys. Video recordings of the sessions were transcribed and then coded for different categories of maternal questions and child responses. The maternal question categories reflected levels of cognitive and language demand, and included Hearing Clarification, Repetition, Structured, and Information and several subcategories of questions. The nine child response categories reflected levels of communicative participation, from No Response to Contingent Response. Lastly, all questions preceding a child's coded response of Elaborated Contingent were identified for analysis of which type of mothers' questions elicited the longest contingent responses from children. Findings indicated that mothers appeared to structure and present their questions differently to children, possibly based on the children's age and gender. In particular, they used more Information Action questions with older than younger children and more Information Talk questions with boys than girls. Age and gender differences were also found in children's responses to mothers' questions; 2-year olds responded more frequently with just a "yes" or "no" than 4-year-olds did, and boys gave Nonverbal responses more frequently than girls did. Analysis of which types of maternal questions most frequently preceded children's Elaborated Contingent responses indicated that Information questions preceded the largest proportion of these responses in both age groups. The results of this study may help us to understand the relation between parents' language practices and a children's language development; this may allow us to expand on current educational tools, family programs, and special assistance for children with delays in language development.