ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that research on caregiver-child interaction has reached a stage where the initial concern to identify features that are common across individual interaction styles is giving way to an interest in the extent and causes of variation. It is thus essential, in defining the effective input to the language development process, that we specify this potent cause of systematic variation in adult-child interaction and acknowledge that development in the child can produce substantial alterations in the nature of the input. Maternal self-repetitions were significantly different three for the 2-year-old and six for the 5-year-old comparisons. In both comparisons, the deaf children's mothers used higher rates of self-repetitions. The hypothesis that specific communicative disorders in children have unique, distinguishable effects on maternal speech was tested in a final comparison of mothers in this case, mothers conversing with normal, developmentally dysphasic, and autistic children, once again equated for stage of language development.
