Do, say, learn: the functions of mothers’ speech to infants

We examined the functions of mothers’ speech to infants during two tasks – book-sharing and bead-stringing – in low-income, ethnically diverse families. Mexican, Dominican, and African American mothers and their infants were video-recorded sharing wordless books and toy beads in the home when infants were aged 1;2 and 2;0. Mothers’ utterances were classified into seven categories (labels/descriptions, emotion/state language, attention...