Mothers' referential communication with preschoolers: Effects of children's syntax and mothers' beliefs

This study examined the effects of children's syntactic ability and mothers' beliefs about child development on mothers' questioning strategies on a referential communication task with preterm (N = 19) or full-term (N = 19) 4 1/2-year-olds. Children's syntactic skills were related to the dyads' communicative success and the frequency of mothers' questions. However, mothers' beliefs about the power of the environment to effect positive developmental outcomes, and their optimism about their child's future school performance predicted mothers' questioning strategies above and beyond the effects of the child's language skills. These influences operated similarly in the preterm and full-term groups. These findings suggest that mothers' beliefs about child development are important variables in the study of communicative input to children.