Child-directed speech: An examination of frequency and reliability in spontaneous language samples.

This study uses a test-retest procedure to examine frequency and reliability of morphosyntactic production in the language of 17 mothers interacting with their children. To examine reliability of different sample lengths, counts and reliability are calculated at 50, 100, 150 and 200 utterances. Results are compared to those of children (2;6-3;6) involved in a larger study and reported in previous work. Results show that (1) frequency counts were higher for adults than children, (2) reliability of most elements was markedly lower in adult language, and (3) relative frequency of items in the child language samples mirrored those in adult samples. PMID: 25575191 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Clin Linguist Phon Source Type: research