© 1998 The British Psychological Society Context dependency in parental speech

Twelve children, six girls and six boys, were videotaped at two ages: first at a mean age of 11:16 months, second at a mean age of 15:16 months, with a parent in their home while having a meal with a spoon (non-play situation) and feeding a doll with a spoon (play situation). It was found that parents reliably differentiated between play and non-play situations by using interaction and instruction frames, respectively. A discriminant function analysis of the relative frequency of seven speech acts used within each frame resulted in the correct classification of 60.42 per cent of the children. These findings are discussed in the light of theories of children's learning in context (Snow, Perlmann & Nathan, 1987), specifically their learning about pretend and real situations (Harris & Kavanaugh, 1993). The acquisition of knowledge in early childhood can be understood contextually, in that it is organized around familiar, temporally structured event sequences or situations (Baue