The primary goal of the project is to contribute to our understanding of what and how children learn about the world within the context of the family. The basic foci are different types of parental interaction strategies and the factors that contribute to variation in those strategies. The variables to be examined include ethnicity, socioeconomic status, the situation in which the interaction occurs, and the behavior of the child. The basic argument is that mothers' sociocultural background interacts with features of the situation (including the child's behavior) to influence mothers' choice of conversational strategy. A related prediction is that mothers from different backgrounds will behave more similarly in some contexts than in others. Participants in the study will be 40 mother-child pairs from 4 social groups (middle-and working-class; Anglo-and Mexican-American). The target child in each family will be approximately 4 1/2 years old (4;4-4;8). Mothers and children will be observed in 5 situations which vary in terms of the degree of structure imposed by the task (or the experimenter) and the nature of the task to be accomplished. The situations were chosen to be roughly equal familiar to all participants and to be representative of contexts in which mothers act as teachers. Analyses will be undertaken to assess the degree to which social background variables and the situation itself predict mothers' behaviors. Additional analyses will be developed to assess the contingency of mother and child behaviors. The results of the study should contribute to knowledge concerning parental behaviors that help children become competent adults. The study should also provide valuable information on parent-child relationships among working-class and minority families and a more detailed analysis of differences in interaction patterns across social groups.
