Limitations
This study has several limitations. First, I only examined mothers’ language not the infants. Future studies should look at language with children in addition to mother’s word type and tokens. Because interaction involves both infant and mother whose actions have affect on one another, to also take into account infants’ words and behaviors to get a more complete understanding of the overall interaction. Another limitation is that although the observations were 45 minutes long (longer than most observational studies that capture only 4-5 minutes of interaction), the data is limited in that the time of day may have influence on the type of activities mothers and infants engage in. Future studies should gather more observations at differ times of the day and various times of the week to get a more representative portrayal of language patterns by activity. This study had only middle income sample. It would be interesting to examine whether these patterns are maintained in samples of other SES strata.
you can also add in sentences here–looking at mothers language by ethnicities….and elaborate
you can also add in sentences here –looking at mother’s language in other languages since this study was done with samples that spoke english only
Lastly, I did not examine gender differences in my sample. Future studies should look at whether maternal patterns of word types and tokens differ by girls versus boys.
Overall, (write concluding paragraph on why this study is important). The study contributes in this field by looking at interactions moment by moment in a naturalistic way.
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here is my research so you can get a better idea of the overview:
Current Research
Prior research on naturalistic exchanges typically reports clustered data, such as how many total words (tokens) and different words (types) children hear during interactions (Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Baumwell, L. B., & Cristofaro, T., 2012). Taking into account all previous researches on this topic, my research is based on a microgenetic approach, which is used for observing the situation from a natural context perspective. It allows me to get more detailed and substantial results of the study, more importantly; it supports the research with many advantages, including unbiased, more elaborated data, larger number of material to analyze, including detailed and substantial transcripts, and larger videotaped data (Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Baumwell, L. B., & Cristofaro, T., 2012).
In order to address the limitations from previous studies, I developed a micro genetic approach to obtain a closer approximation of a “real life” picture of interaction as it unfolds in “real-time” in the home setting, and describe variations in language experiences within and across daily routines. Specifically, I document a minute-by-minute change in mothers’ total words (tokens) and number of different words (types) and describe how mothers’ language differs across daily routines. I expect to observe that by studying minute-by-minute recordings of daily routines, I will notice fluctuations of mothers’ use of different types of words and different number of words in her moment-to-moment interaction with her child. The second hypothesis is that mother’s will use more words types and word tokens during different routines, thereby depicting a more dynamic, context-dependent use of language. Based on prior literature, I hypothesize that mothers will use more diverse language in book-sharing activities and play activities than in grooming, feeding or unstructured activities.
The two research questions are: 1) Does mothers’ word types and word tokens differ minute by minute? 2) Does mothers’ word types and word tokens differ by daily routines?
participants: Twenty mothers and their biological children (10 boys and 10 girls) participated in the study when the children were 13 months old. Mothers are from white middle class families that live in New York City. These participants were recruited from private obstetric and pediatric groups in a large metropolitan area. The inclusion criteria were: firstborn term infants, infants devoid of neurological abnormalities. All participants came from relatively homogeneous, European American, middle-to-upper-middle-class intact households. All of the participant infants were first born, no child had been diagnosed any disabilities during the visit. Average age of mothers was 20-30 years of age at the time of birth of their children. The dominant language in the families was English. Home visits with mother-child dyads were conducted by teams of research assistants.