Accounting for variations in parental speech and gesture

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed project will provide a detailed description of the communication that mothers use with their young children, and will investigate predictors of variation in this communicative input. The participants consist of 65 mother-child dyads chosen to reflect the demographics of the Chicago area, and 40 dyads from families where children have ischemic unilateral brain injury. The data come from videotapes of mother-child interaction, and maternal responses on questionnaires regarding verbal and perceptual skills, depression, and knowledge about child development. Mother-child videotaped interaction at child age 21/2 years will be transcribed for verbal interaction and coded for gesture use. Correlational analyses will examine the relationship between maternal verbal and nonverbal measures. Multiple regression analyses will investigate potential predictors (i.e., verbal/spatial skills, depression, knowledge of child development) of verbal and nonverbal communication, controlling for child factors. Individual growth modeling techniques will determine if there is significant change over time in maternal verbal and nonverbal measures between child age 30 and 54 months. Finally, analysis of variance will be used to compare the two groups of parents on input measures.