Abstract
Previous studies have shown correlations between maternal questions and children’s responses during book reading, but little attention has been paid to the cognitive and linguistic demands embedded in these questions. This study investigates how different types of maternal questions predict kindergarten-aged children’s responses, introducing a cognitive-linguistic framework that categorizes questions by their cognitive and linguistic complexity and examines their relationship to children’s responsiveness and accuracy. Data were drawn from a published corpus of 208 Chinese mother–child dyads, including 69 four-year-olds, 73 five-year-olds, and 66 six-year-olds. Maternal questions during reading sessions were coded into four types based on cognitive demand (CD) and linguistic demand (LD): (1) low CD/low LD, (2) low CD/high LD, (3) high CD/low LD, (4) high CD/high LD. Children’s responses were coded for two dimensions: the frequency of total responses and accurate responses. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that, after controlling for child gender, grade, and maternal utterance frequency, maternal total questions and all four question types positively predicted the frequency of children’s utterances, total responses, and accurate responses. Grade-specific analyses indicated similar patterns, except that for six-year-olds, only questions with high CD but low LD uniquely predicted utterance frequency. These findings highlight the importance of considering both cognitive and linguistic demands in maternal questioning strategies and suggest that the influence of question type may vary with children’s developmental stage.
Presenters
Qiuyun CaiStudent, Master, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Jingxian Zhou
Lecturer, School of Education, Guangxi Science & Technology Normal University, Guangxi, China Cathy Yui Chi Fong
The Education University of Hong Kong
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Kindergarten, Cognitive demand, Linguistic demand, Maternal questions, Book reading
