Schedule 71. StuTS + 31. TaCoS

In my master’s thesis, which combines psychological and linguistic theories, I analyse the relationship between maternal attachment style and the mothers' use of language to talk about the actions and speech of their children (related talk). My hypothesis is that mothers identified as having a secure/autonomous attachment style will use language more often to talk about what the child is currently doing/saying compared to mothers with an insecure attachment style.

In the 70ies of the last century, Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main described four different patterns in child-parent attachment. These four attachment styles have also been identified in adults. Broadly speaking, insecurely attached individuals have difficulties building and maintaining close relationships while securely attached adults have less problems. In my data, which consists of 40 mother-child dyads (age of child: 5 years) solving a task together, the attachment type of the mothers has been identified. My main research question is: To which degree do mothers with different attachment styles use their language to talk about the actions and speech of their children (vs. about other things)? For this purpose I have developed and applied a developmentally and situationally appropriate concept of contingent talk/verbal responsiveness which I have termed "related talk". This allows me to categorize all utterances by the mother as either related to the current action or speech of the child or not. Preliminary results show that securely attached mothers use referential talk more frequently than insecurely attached mothers.

Info

Day: 2022-05-28
Start time: 14:00
Duration: 00:30
Room: Eisenga (2.32)
Track: Neuro- and Psycholinguistics
Language: en

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