Reciprocal sequential relations in conversations between parents and children with developmental delays

Sequential analysis was used to test several a priori hypotheses in an initial attempt to identify how parents may scaffold the conversation of children with developmental disabilities. Nineteen children with developmental delays in the first stage of language learning (i.e., Brown's, 1973, Stage I) conversed with their primary parents in a laboratory setting. Trained observers coded adult utterances for topic and various types of questions and nonquestions. Child utterances were coded for topic. Child topic continuations were more likely to follow adult continuing questions than they were to follow any other type of adult utterance tested. Adult continuing questions and continuing nonquestions were more likely to follow child topic continuations than child topic initiations. Future experimental studies are needed to test whether the sequential dependencies identified here represent causal relations. The clinical implications of the results are discussed. Children who converse often with adults may develop language more quickly than do chil-dren who converse infrequently. Adults use several techniques that model new language structures immediately after the child talks. Many of these contingent modeling methods facilitate language development (e.g., expan