Communication between mothers and their normal or developmentally dysphasic children in experimental sessions

The interaction of 32 Finnish mother-child dyads were analyzed in order to compare the behavioral features of normally developing (8 boys, 8 girls) and developmentally dysphasic (language-delayed) children (12 boys, 4 girls) doing tasks with their mothers. The average age of the children in the normal group was 4:1 years and in dysphasic group 4:7 years. The groups were matched to educational background of the mothers and to the age of the children. The videotaped observation sessions consisted of a block construction task and a discussion task. Results showed that mothers of dysphasic children tended to be more dominant and controlling and less cooperative. The dysphasic childrens' lower l…