A comparison of the types of utterances used by mothers and day care workers to infants

During this decade many mothers of infants are returning to the work force soon after their child's birth. Therefore substitute child care has become more of a focus of research to determine its effects upon infants. This study investigated whether there are differences between the types of utterances that mothers and day care workers use with infants, specifically interrogative, imperative, and declarative types of utterances. Ten mothers and ten day care workers were observed during a fifteen-minute play session and a fifteen-minute feeding session. Both sessions were taperecorded. The utterances were transcribed and coded as to the types of utterances used by each caregiver.

A Chi-square test was performed and revealed that there was not a significant difference between groups in the types of utterances used with infants. Therefore it was concluded that lower-middle class mothers and lower-middle class female day care workers do not differ in the types of utterances that they use with infants. The implications of the individual differences which were observed between subjects were also discussed.