Identifier

etd-0417102-170544

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe the home environment and nature of mother-child interactions of low-income African-American mothers. The subjects included eight mother-child dyads. All of the mothers were single, African-American and working toward a G.E.D. Their age ranged from 17-30 years of age. Their children ranged in age from 24-67 months. A home visit and a mother-child play session that was collected at the children’s child care center were utilized to collect the data. The findings from the current study were consistent with the literature reviewed in that most of the mothers produced a decreased speech rate, decreased number of word types, decreased percentage of affirmatives, and an increased percentage of controlling behaviors compared to data from middle socioeconomic status mothers. It is important to note, however, that the mothers did vary in their language behaviors. Although previous studies have found significant differences between the language behaviors of lower socioeconomic status mothers when compared to upper-middle class and professional mothers, the results of this study indicate that a range of variability does exist among the former group of mothers.

Date

2002

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Janna Oetting

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.790

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