Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological AssuciaUon, Inc.
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Developmental Psychology
1998. Vol. 34, No. 1, 115-124
Mothers' Knowledge About Children's Play and Language Development:
Short-Term Stability and Interrelations
Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda and Lisa A. Chen
Marc H. Bornstein
New \brk University
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Sixty-four mothers of children ranging in age from 6 to 58 months were asked to determine, for
pairings of play and language items, which item was more advanced developmentally. This procedure
was repeated within 2 weeks. In general, mothers' orderings of play and language items matched
those established in the developmental literature and were stable over the short term. Mothers'
knowledge about language development was stronger than and unrelated to their knowledge about
play, suggesting that maternal knowledge about developmental domains is differentiated and specific.
Finally, mothers' judgments about the developmental milestones depended on their children's current
developmental stage: Mothers were less accurate at estimating the timing of milestones that their
children had mastered many months earlier, supporting the view that mothers' knowledge is informed
by their children's recent rather than past achievements in specific areas.
mothers in accuracy at ordering play activities predicts their play
with their own children (Damast, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein,
1996). In this article, we seek to elaborate on these inquiries
and to extend them to the nature of mothers' knowledge about
language development as well. Specifically, the goals of the
present study were to (a) ascertain the extent to which mothers
appreciate the ordinal nature of children's play and language
development, (b) assess the short-term (2-week) stability of
maternal knowledge in these two areas, (c) examine whether
mothers' knowledge about play relates to their knowledge about
language, and (d) evaluate how maternal knowledge is influenced by children's developmental stage.
In general, before about 9 months, children's play encompasses exploring objects (Belsky & Most, 1981; Fenson, Kagan,
Kearsley, & Zelazo, 1976), and their communicative overtures
are restricted to prelinguistic cooing first and then babbling
(Bates, O'Connell, & Shore, 1987). Toward the end of the first
year, children begin to engage in nonsymbolic play (i.e., concrete and functional activities with objects such as pressing
buttons and nesting barrels; see Belsky & Most, 1981; Fenson
et al., 1976) and to imitate adult vocalizations and use words
in performative routines (e.g., waving and saying "bye-bye";
see Bates, Bremerton, & Snyder, 1988). During the early part of
the second year, rudimentary symbolic play emerges, as children
reenact simple actions that they or others have exhibited in the
past, thereby demonstrating their first steps toward play that is
generative and characterized by an "as if" quality (e.g., pretending to feed self or a doll; see Belsky & Most, 1981; Fein,
1981; McCune, 1995; McCune-Nicolich, 1981; Watson &
Fischer, 1977). At roughly the same time, children spontaneously produce their first words, which are typically used to label
common objects or events in the environment (e.g., ball as in
"That's a ball"; see Bates et al., 1988; Nelson, 1973). From
this poi nt onward, children become increasingly capable of symbolically representing their world both in play and in language
(Fein, 1981; Mandler, 1983). Notable developments in the two
domains include the ability to incorporate others into the repre-
How knowledgeable are mothers about the developmental nature of play and language? Interest in examining maternal
knowledge about growth in these key areas of development
derives from the notion that mothers' views might motivate
interactions with their children and in turn have consequences
for children's social and cognitive development (see, e.g.,
Bornstein et al., 1996; Goodnow, 1995; Goodnow & Collins,
1990; Holden, 1995; McGillicuddy-DeLisi & Sigel, 1995; Pomerleau, Malcuit, & Sabatier, 1991; Sigel, 1992). Mothers who
are knowledgeable about general developmental sequences
might be more likely to create an environment that is appropriate
to their children's developing abilities, which in turn will support their children's cognitive and social advances (e.g., Hunt &
Paraskevopoulos, 1980; Miller, 1988). Hence, maternal knowledge can be conceptualized as indirectly affecting developmental outcomes in children. Empirically, mothers of preterm
infants who are more knowledgeable about infant development
have been found to have babies with higher Bayley Mental
Development Index and Physical Development Index scores
(Dichtelmiller et al., 1992). Mothers are differentially knowledgeable about progressions in children's play (Tamis-LeMonda, Damast, & Bornstein, 1994), and variation among
Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda and Lisa A. Chen, Department of Applied Psychology, New York University; Marc H. Bornstein, National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Rockville, Maryland.
This study was supported by research grants from the National Institutes of Health (HD20559, HD20807) and from the National Institute
of Mental Health (MH48915) as well as by a Research Challenge Fund
grant from New York University. Lisa A. Chen was supported by a New
\brk University Predoctoral Fellowship and a Monroe Stein Fellowship
from New "fork University. We thank M. Albright, E. Bass, L. Cyphers,
A. M. DamasL and J. McClure for feedback and assistance.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, New York University, Department of Applied
Psychology, 239 Greene Street, 5th Floor, New York, New York 10003.
Electronic mail may be sent via Internet to [email protected].
115
116
T A M I S - L E M O N D A , CHEN, AND BORNSTEIN
sentation of events, as evidenced in children's pretending toward
others in play (e.g., feeding a doll; see Watson & Fischer, 1977)
and describing others' actions, possessions, and so forth in language (e.g., saying "mommy" to mother's shoe; see Bates et
al., 1988); their ability to integrate separate units, as evidenced
in the sequencing of symbolic actions in play and combining of
words in language (e.g., pretending to feed and then wash a
doll; see Fenson & Ramsay, 1980; saying "Wash dolly"; see
Fenson et al., 1994); their ability to cognize and represent objects or events that are not perceptually bound to the immediate
and concrete world, as evidenced in the substitution of play
objects for literal objects (Elder & Pederson, 1978; Fein, 1981;
Killen & Uzgiris, 1981; Ungerer, Zelazo, Kearsley, & O'Leary,
1981; Watson & Fischer, 1977) and production of phrases in
memory or to express nonliteral events (e.g., pretending a stick
is a spoon; saying "mommy hat" to a towel wrapped around
mother's head); and their ability to represent the world from
another's perspective (e.g., to pretend the doll falls down and
cries; to say "boy sad1' in reference to a crying boy; see Kahana-Kalman & Walker-Andrews, 1996). In the domain of play
specifically, there is evidence that symbolic achievements are
additive, with actions that incorporate two abilities (e.g., engaging in vicarious play and using a substitute object at the same
time) being more advanced than either action separately (e.g.,
vicarious play or substitutive play alone; see Watson & Jackowitz, 1984).
In this study, we explored mothers' knowledge about critical
developments in these two areas of childhood representational
thought. It represents one of the few empirical investigations
of maternal knowledge about play (see Tamis-LeMonda et al.,
1994), and it is the first to empirically assess mothers' knowledge about the developmental timing of specific language milestones that emerge across children's first 2 years. To date, investigations of mothers' knowledge about children's language development have been largely reported in anthropological and
cross-cultural literatures (e.g., Bril, Zack, & Nkounkou-Hombessa, 1989; Keller, Miranda, & Gauda, 1984; Ninio, 1988).
This investigation is also one of the first to consider if parents'
knowledge about children's development is specialized. Thus
far, researchers have examined mothers' ability to estimate the
developmental timing of a wide range of childhood activities,
an approach that characterizes mothers as more or less generally
knowledgeable (e.g., MacPhee, 1981). However, mothers'
knowledge about development must include different specific
domains of children's functioning and thus may vary as a function of the domain being assessed. In particular, mothers' knowledge about developments in child language might differ from
their knowledge about developments in child play because of
different societal emphases placed on the two domains. In Western cultures, the timely acquisition of key language milestones
(e.g., first words, combinatorial speech) is considered to be an
important indicator of children's cognitive achievements. As a
consequence, the mastery of language skills might be salient to
mothers who actively seek information about normative development in thai area. In contrast, the importance of play as a vehicle
for learning and as a window onto children's cognitive abilities
is less ubiquitous. Consequently, mothers* knowledge about play
milestones might not be as extensive as their knowledge about
language, but inslead might be influenced by individual factors
such as education or personal views about the importance of
play in children's development.
In this regard, this study is the first to ask whether mothers
who are more knowledgeable about one developmental domain
(e.g., play) are also more knowledgeable about another (e.g.,
language). This question is central to theoretical models about
the nature of relations between parenting thought and parenting
action. That is, knowledge about a particular domain of child
development might explain parenting behaviors in that domain
but not others; it might be useful to consider knowledge as a
specific construct when examining its association to parentchild interactions in play and language.
We hypothesized that the educated, urban, Western mothers
we assessed would be knowledgeable about play and language
development in general, that knowledge about language would
be stronger than knowledge about play, and that mothers' knowledge about play would be independent of their knowledge about
language. That is, mothers' knowledge about distinct developmental domains was expected to be specialized. The idea that
parenting knowledge is specialized derives from extant models
of environmental specificity that suggest that parenting is best
conceptualized as multidimensional and as relating in specific
ways to specific outcomes in children (e.g., Bornstein, 1989,
1995; Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda, 1990; Tamis-LeMonda,
1996; Wachs, 1992). If parenting behaviors are multifaceted, it
is likely that the cognitions that motivate and underlie dimensions of behavior are also multifaceted.
As a part of this investigation, we also examined the shortterm stability of parenting knowledge. Insofar as cognitive structures affect parenting interactions, it is psycho metrically requisite and basic to establish the stability of domains of parenting
knowledge over brief periods. If measures of parental knowledge assess the extent to which mothers have developed wellformulated and specialized schema about domains of children's
development, we expected individual mothers to demonstrate
variation in their judgments about play and language that would
be relatively stable over a 2-week period.
Finally, we asked whether specific areas of parenting knowledge depend on the developmental stage of one's own child visa-vis the activities a parent is being asked to judge. Investigators
have recently expressed interest in the sources of parenting cognitions and have inspired theoretical debates over whether the
experiences of rearing a child inform parenting views or whether
such views are embedded in and are a reflection of larger contextual settings. Some have suggested that global beliefs and goals
as well as expectations about the timing of developmental milestones are not modified by specific interactions and child rearing
experiences (e.g., Murphy & Alexander, 1991); instead, beliefs
about children might be the result of normative cultural socialization and values (e.g., Lightfoot & Valsiner, 1992; Russell &
Russell, 1982). Alternatively, parental cognitions (including
knowledge) may be subject to the influence of experience and
hence susceptible to feedback from parent-child encounters.
McGiUicuddy-DeLisi (1982) asserted that parental beliefs
about development are constructed and modified on the basis
of one's personal experiences as a parent (see also Bornstein,
1995; Goodnow, 1995; McGillicuddy-DeLisi & Sigel, 1995 for
further discussion). DeGrada and Ponzo (1971), however, suggested that the modification of parental views is only temporary.
117
MOTHERS' KNOWLEDGE ABOUT PLAY AND LANGUAGE
and that a parent will revert back to preconceptions once a
particular experience with a child has passed. More specifically,
they observed that when parents are involved with a child of a
particular age, their knowledge about the competence of children at that age may be accurate. However, once their children
are beyond the ages they are asked to judge, parents often rely
on generalized stereotypes. In support of this hypothesis, studies
have indicated that when parents of older children are asked to
make judgments about preschoolers, they often underestimate
children's abilities, a finding that reflects their general bias toward considering young children to be "babies" (D'Alessio,
1990).
Each individual item was balanced in its spatial presentation, appearing
half the time on the left and half the time on the right. Presentations of
play and language items were completely randomized and followed
guidelines on the optimum order for paired-comparison tasks with 11
stimuli (Ross, 1934).
At the conclusion of the second visit, mothers were asked to complete
two age checklists that listed the 11 play items (randomized) and 11
language items (randomized). They were asked to estimate the ages (in
months) at which children in general are first capable of exhibiting each
of the 11 play and 11 language activities on these checklists.
If knowledge about developmental milestones is only temporarily informed by current parenting experiences, mothers ought
to be more accurate at judging childhood milestones that are
close to their own children's current developmental stage. As
children advance beyond particular developmental periods,
mothers' awareness of the timing of past accomplishments might
dim. We therefore expected mothers to be most accurate when
judging the timing of play and language milestones that were
close to the current age of their children and, in line with research by DeGrada and Ponzo (1971) and D'Alessio (1990),
to overestimate the ages at which milestones occur when asked
to make retrospective judgments.
The play and language scales were based on empirical findings about
children's play and language in the extant literature (as discussed earlier). Specifically, Level 1 in play represented simple exploration; Levels
2 and 3 were examples of basic nonsymbolic play actions; Level 4
exemplified basic self-directed symbolic play; Levels 5 through 8 reflected pretense play in which one of several achievements was exhibited
(other-directed play, sequencing, substitution, and vicarious play); and
Levels 9 through 11 represented play actions in which combinations of
symbolic achievements were exhibited (vicarious sequencing, sequencing with a substitution, and vicarious substitution).
In the language scale. Levels 1 through 4 represented prelinguistic
communications in which vocalizations are used to communicate in
increasingly sophisticated ways (e.g., first nondiscriminantly, then to
request a target object); Levels 5 through 7 represented single-word
utterances of increasing sophistication (first being used in imitation,
then to label, then to express possession); and Levels 8 through 11
represented multiword utterances of increasing sophistication (first to
express concrete desires, and later to express playful substitutions, memories, and emotions).
From these procedures, we calculated mothers' accuracy at judging
the difficulty of play and language items by correlating their ordering
of play items and ordering of language items with the empirical scales
(using Spearman rho). Six accuracy scores were calculated for each
mother: those obtained from paired-comparisons tasks during Visits 1
and 2 for play and language separately and two accuracy scores for play
and language judgments from the age checklists.
In addition, two age-discrepancy scores estimated how discrepant
mothers' judgments of age onsets were across the 11 levels for play
and language separately. These values were computed by summing the
absolute differences between mothers' age estimates and empirical estimates for age of onsets as documented in the literature. These discrepancy scores were calculated around an estimated window of time, given
the large variation children show in the onsets of the milestones that we
examine. For example, empirical studies suggest that toddlers express
their first spontaneous words at about 13 months on average (see Bates
et al., 1988). For our purposes, we created a window of accuracy around
this time of 4 months. Thus, if a mother estimated first words to first
occur earlier than 11 months or later than 15 months, she would be
assigned a discrepancy score based on the number of months her estimate
fell outside this developmental window (i.e., 2 months). Calculations
based on the age checklists required mothers to have completed every
item; when mothers omitted one or more item, their data were excluded
from analyses (n — 13).
Method
Participants
Sixty-four mothers of children ranging in age from 6 to 58 months
were visited in their homes twice within a 2-week period. Mothers were
recruited from private pediatric and obstetric groups in New ^brk City
as well as by local newspaper advertisements. Participants varied in their
socioeconomic status (M = 40.1, SD = 13.4, on the Hollingshead 11975 ]
Four-Factor Index of Social Status, range = 8 to 64) and came from
diverse ethnic backgrounds (66% European American, 16% African
American, 8% Asian American, 69c Latino American, 5% biracial); all
spoke English as a first language. Twenty-three percent of mothers had
graduate degrees, 41% had completed college, 28% had partial college
educations, and 8% had either complete or partial high school degrees.
The average age of mothers was 33.1 years (SD = 6.0). Of the 64
mothers, 3 did not complete the second visit, and an additional 7 had
computer data missing in certain cells for various reasons (e.g., experimenter error, equipment failure, or participant fatigue). Analyses are
based on unequal but maximal sample sizes.
Procedure
During each visit, mothers were administered an 11-item play scale
and then an 11-item language scale using a paired-comparisons procedure presented on a computer (see two left columns of Tables 1 and
2). In the paired-comparisons task, each item was matched with each of
the others, and randomized pairs were presented serially to participants in
a left-right alignment. The mother's task was to indicate, by pressing
a key, which member of the pair she thought to be the more difficult
for a child and hence to be mastered at a later age. The inclusion of 11
items in the paired-comparison procedure rendered 55 pairs in total for
each scale. Mothers were asked to judge the difficulty of the same play
and language activities during each visit.
Items within each scale and across the two scales were equated for
number of words and phrases to ensure that decisions regarding difficulty
were not influenced by structural characteristics of specific examples.
Play and Language Scales
Results
We first report mothers' accuracy at ranking play and language items on the basis of paired comparisons for Visits 1 and
2, followed by accuracy in age estimates based on the checklists.
We then report the short-term stability of these estimates. Mothers' knowledge about play development is then related to moth-
118
T A M F S - L E M O N D A , CHEN, AND BORNSTEIN
Table 1
Play Milestones
Average age
(in months)
mothers estimated
activity to emerge
Play level
Simple manipulation
Unitary functional activity
Combinational activity involving logic (e.g.,
nesting, puzzles)
Self-directed symbolic play
Other-directed symbolic play
Sequencing of two or more different selfdirected symbolic play acts
Vicarious self-directed symbolic play
Self-directed symbolic play with object
substitution
Sequencing of two or more different
vicarious symbolic play acts
Sequencing of two or more different selfdirected symbolic play acts with an
object substitution
Vicarious other-directed symbolic play act
with object substitution
Play milestone examples
M
SD
Reach for a small toy car, hold on to it. and look at it.
Hold a baby doll in his or her lap, touch the doll's
eyes, and open them.
Put toy saucer on the floor, take toy cup, and place it
on saucer.
Grasp a toy teapot, get a toy cup, and pour from teapot
into cup.
Pick up toy brush, look for baby doll, and brush its hair
with brush.
Get a toy pot, stir in it with toy spoon, and eat from
toy spoon.
Reach for baby doll, stand the doll on its feet, and
make it walk.
Pick up long block, find a toy plate, and stir on plate
with block.
Turn book's pages for bear, put the bear to sleep, and
make snoring sounds.
Grab toy brush, stir with it in toy pitcher, and pour in
toy cup.
8.8
11.0
5.7
4.6
16.1
6.0
14.1
6.1
14.6
4.4
18.9
6.5
18.2
5.4
14.1
7.2
19.0
5.2
Take block, put little person on it, and make "Vmm,
Vmm" noise.
ers' knowledge about language development on the basis of the
paired-comparisons and age-estimate tasks. Finally, we consider
children's actual developmental stage in relation to maternal
knowledge about play and language.
Before analyses, we examined relations between all demographic measures and mothers' accuracy scores for play and
language. Children's gender did not relate to mothers' judgments
about play and language at either visit, thus we report data on the
full sample. However, mothers' education level was significantly
related to play knowledge based on paired-comparisons estimates both for Visits 1 and 2 and for the assessment of knowledge based on mothers' age estimates (rs — .31, .35, and .42,
ps < .05). Education showed a slightly positive, although nonsignificant, association to mothers' knowledge about language
on Visits 1 and 2 (rs = .17 and .27) but showed no association
to estimates based on age (r — .01). The association between
maternal education and play knowledge specifically accords
with our initial hypothesis that knowledge about play is more
likely to be affected by individual factors. On the basis of these
findings, we examined short-term stability in play and language,
relations between play and language, and the role of children's
developmental stage in mothers' knowledge with and without
maternal education eovaried. Results were essentially identical
under the two conditions, and so maternal education was not
considered further.
Mothers' Knowledge About Development of Children's
Play and Language
To assess mothers' knowledge about progressions in play and
in language, we first correlated mothers' orderings of the 11
17.7
22.1
5.9
play and 11 language items from the paired-comparisons tasks
with the empirical orderings of these items. Mothers' ratings
related significantly to the empirical ordering: Spearman rs =
.48, p < .05, and r — .82, p < .01, for play and language
respectively, on Visit 1, and on Visit 2, rs = .57 and .83, ps
We next examined responses to each possible pairing of play
items (e.g., Level 1 with Level 2), assessing the percentage of
mothers who judged the lower play level to be easier than the
higher play level for the paired comparisons judgments on Visits
1 and 2. As a group, mothers correctly ordered 40 of the 55
possible pairings on the first visit and 43 of the 55 pairings on the
second visit. The same analyses were conducted for language.
Mothers correctly ordered 51 of the 55 possible pairings on both
Visits 1 and 2 (all binomial^s < .01).
We then assessed mothers' knowledge about play and language development on the basis of their ordering of items from
the age checklists. That is, if a mother stated that Play Level 1
occurred in children at 9 months on average and Play Level 2
occurred at 11 months on average, she was credited with correctly ordering the two items develop men tally. From the 55 pairings extracted from these estimates (to parallel all possible combinations), mothers were again accurate in ordering 40 of the
55 pairs for play and 48 of the 55 pairs for language (binomial
p< .01).
These analyses do not consider how accurate a mother is in
estimating the age at which children in general first exhibit
each behavior. That is, mothers could potentially order play or
language items perfectly, thereby achieving a 1.0 correlation
with the empirical scale, and yet inaccurately judge the actual
119
MOTHERS' KNOWLEDGE ABOUT PLAY AND LANGUAGE
Table 2
Language Milestones
Average age
(in months)
mothers estimated
activity to emerge
Language level
Nondiscriminant prelinguistic cooing
Prelinguistic responsive person-directed
babbling
Prelinguistic intentional other-directed
request for comfort
Prelingustic intentional other-directed
instrumental request
Single-word imitation
Single-word nominal, label
Single-word nominal expressing
possession
Multiword request for recurrence with
a nominal
Multiword utterance with a word
substitution
Multiword utterance expressing a
memory
Multiword utterance expressing an
emotion
Language milestone example
M
SD
Look around room and then look into air and begin
vocalizing "ahhhh, ooooh" repeatedly.
Look over to partner, respond to person's vocalizations
with sounds such as "gagaga, bababa."
Whining "mamama mama" when distressed in request
to be picked up by mother or father.
Look at person, reach for cup, and grunt "uhh uhh" to
ask for cap.
Look at person leaving the room, say "bye-bye" in
imitation after person says bye-bye.
Look at mother getting a bottle and spontaneously say
"ba ba," labeling the bottle.
Look over to dog's ball, say "dog dog," indicating the
ball belongs to dog.
Look over to juice, reach for juice, and say "more j u "
to request juice.
Say "hat head" as mother exits the shower with a
towel on her head.
Say "baby down" to picture of park, indicating baby
fell at park last week.
Look at picture of boy crying, point to picture, and say
"boy sad."
9.3
6.4
8.3
4,2
11.2
4.5
10.7
3.6
14.1
5.0
12.7
4.3
18.4
4.8
17.9
5.8
22.3
6.2
22.0
6.1
22.7
^4
developmental timing of these events. Thus, we examined information from the age checklists to determine the accuracy of
mothers' age estimates for the 11 play and 11 language items.
Results indicated that ihe average ages at which mothers estimated each of the items to first occur generally accorded with
ages that are documented in the literature (see Tables 1 and 2,
right column); it should be noted, however, that this general
accuracy occurred in the context of substantive variation among
mothers in their age estimates, as reflected by the generally large
standard deviations. Specifically, for play, mothers judged both
simple manipulation (Level 1) and unitary functional activity
(Level 2) to occur toward the end of the first year, self-directed
symbolic play (Level 4) and other-directed symbolic play
(Level 5) to occur toward the start of the second year, and
vicarious play (Level 7), sequenced vicarious play (Level 9),
sequenced substitutive play (Level 10), and substitutive vicarious play (Level 11) to occur during the latter half of the second
year. As can be seen in Table 1, more subtle age distinctions
among advanced forms of play did not occur. In contrast to the
generally accurate estimates by mothers of the age of onset for
these milestones, mothers considered combinatorial play (Level
3) to emerge as late as 16.1 months, sequenced play (Level 6)
to emerge as late as 18.9 months, and substitutive play (Level
8) to occur as early as 14.1 months. Nonetheless, the Spearman
correlation between the estimated ages and the empirical orderings of items overall was strong (?• = .77, p < .01).
For language, more accurate knowledge about the age of onset
of milestones was identified. Mothers judged prelinguistic cooing and babbling (Levels 1 and 2) to occur during the latter
half of the first year, instrumental requests for comfort and for
objects (which do not yet express conventional words; Levels
3 and 4) to occur at the end of the first year, imitations and
labels (Levels 5 and 6) to occur toward the start of the second
year, the expression of possession and simple word combinations (Levels 7 and 8) to occur at the middle of the second year,
and the use of phrases that entail substitutions, memories, and
emotions (Levels 9, 10, and 11) to occur at the end of the
second year. The Spearman correlation between the estimated
ages and the empirical orderings of language items overall was
strong (r = .95, p < .001). As can be seen in Table 2, distinctions within certain categories were not made (e.g., the
multiword utterances of Levels 9, 10, and 11 were all judged
to occur around 22 months).
Short-Term Stability of Mothers' Play and Language
Judgments
To examine whether mothers' knowledge about progressions
in play and in language are stable, we related their accuracy at
judging the 11 play items on Visit 1 to their accuracy at judging
the 11 play items on Visit 2. The same was done for language
items. Results showed that judgments about play as well as
about language were stable over the short term (r = .46, p <
.01 and r = .84, p < .001, respectively).
As a part of these analyses, we also examined whether mothers' accuracy in ordering play and language items from the
paired-comparisons tasks related to their accuracy in ordering
the emergence of the same items based on the age checklists.
Relations were significant for both play (r = .52, p < .001)
and language (r = .62, p < .001).
120
T A M I S - L E M O N D A , CHEN, AND BORNSTEIN
Comparing Mothers' Knowledge About Play to Their
Knowledge About Language
Mothers' knowledge about language was significantly
stronger than was their knowledge about play based on the
paired-comparisons tasks on both visits (as indicated by t tests
comparing correlations between their rank orderings and the
empirical scale for play and language), f(58) = 5.65, p <
.0001, and t(52) = 4.60, p < .0001, and based on responses
to the age checklist, r(41) = 5.63, p < .0001. In fact, 49% of
mothers on Visit 1 and 53% of mothers on Visit 2 had rankings
of language items that correlated with the empirical scales at
or above .90 in contrast with no mothers showing such high
correlations in play. However, the lowered accuracy of play
might be attributed to its lower reliability.
Mothers' knowledge about play was unrelated to their knowledge about language in Visit 1 (> = -.08) and in Visit 2 (r =
.01). The same independence held when comparing knowledge
from the two age checklists (r = .04). Thus, mothers who were
relatively more knowledgeable about play were not necessarily
more knowledgeable about language, suggesting that parenting knowledge is best conceptualized as a multidimensional
construct.
Maternal Knowledge in Relation to Children's
Developmental Stage
As a first step toward assessing the dependence of maternal
knowledge on child developmental level, we examined relations
between children's age and mothers' knowledge from the
paired-comparisons tasks and age estimates of when developmental milestones first occurred. Mothers' accurate ordering of
language milestones was inversely related to children's age for
Visits 1 and 2 (rs = -.38 and - . 4 4 . p s < .01) and to the age
discrepancy score for language (r = .50, p < .01). Children's
age related nonsignificantly or weakly to orderings of play for
Visits 1 and 2 (rs = .03 and - . 2 4 ) and inversely to the age
discrepancy score (r = .50,/; < .01).
To examine these relations more closely, we divided the sample into three stage groups based on developmental transitions
as documented in the play and language literatures (e.g., Bates
et al., 1988; Belsky & Most, 1981; McCall, Eichorn, & Hogarty,
1977; Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein, 1996). That is, children
between the ages of 4 and 12 months are typically considered
to be presymbolic; children between the ages of 13 and 21
months to be in a stage of symbolic emergence and elaboration;
and children over 21 months to have achieved moderately advanced levels of representational ability. We then analyzed the
age estimates of these three groups in two 3 (stage group; n =
19 per group) x 11 (level) analyses of variance conducted
separately for play and language. Results showed a significant
main effect for play level, F{ 10, 420) - 34.5, p < .001, indicating mothers' general sensitivity to the ordinal nature of the levels
as documented above, as well as stage group, F(2, 42) = 10.7,
p < .001, indicating mothers' differential accuracy across the
three groups. The interaction between stage group and play level
was not significant.
Figure 1 plots the estimated ages for each of the 11 play
actions for the three stage groups of children against the empiri-
4
5 6 7 8
Play Milestone
9
10
11
- ••*- - Presymbolic
—•—Emerging Symbolic
—*— Advanced Symbolic
Figure].
Age estimates (in months) for each of the II play milestones
in mothers of presymbolic, emerging symbolic, and advanced symbolic
children.
cal orderings of these items. Note that the abscissa artificially
represents the play milestones along equidistant intervals; this
is merely a convenient representation of otherwise ordinally
based information. Examination of these data shows that mothers from the advanced symbolic (i.e., oldest) group generally
estimated most milestones to occur later than mothers from
the other two groups. For example, mothers of older children
considered simple manipulations (Level 1) to not occur until
11.1 months, nonsymbolic functional activities (Level 2) to not
occur until 13.3 months, and single acts of self-directed symbolic play (Level 4) to not occur until 17.2 months; mothers of
younger children considered the three activities to occur al the
ages of 7.1, 9.4, and 12.2 months, respectively, on average.
Similarly, analyses for language estimates identified a significant effect for language level, / 7 (10,440) = 77.2,p < .001,
and stage group F(2, 44) = 4.7, p < .01. Results of these
analyses are presented in Figure 2. Again, mothers of the oldest
children judged language milestones to first occur al later ages
than did mothers in the other two groups. For example, mothers
of older children did not expect cooing and babbling (Levels \
MOTHERS' KNOWLEDGE ABOUT PLAY AND LANGUAGE
play interactions (e.g., Damast et al., 1996; Tamis-LeMonda &
Bornstein, 1991) and adjust the level of their own play over
time in close synchrony with changes to their children's play
(Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein, 1991). Similarly, mothers modulate the complexity of their speech to meet their children's current language abilities (Bornstein & Lamb, 1992; Bruner, 1983;
Ferguson, 1978; Snow, 1977).
Such studies suggest that parents are behaviorally responsive
to their children's changing competencies, but they raise a question as to whether parents are cognitively aware of developments
in children's play and language. As suggested by Miller (1988),
awareness of developmental milestones might help mothers create stimulating and challenging environments for their young
children. The goal of the present study was to examine mothers'
cognitive appreciation of the progressive nature of children's
play and language. More specifically, we ascertained mothers'
knowledge about children's unfolding abilities, we asked
whether such knowledge is stable over the short term, we assessed whether parental knowledge is generalized or specific,
and we identified relations between children's developmental
stage and maternal knowledge about specific areas of children's
development.
28 -,
1
121
2
3
4 5 6 7 8 9
Language Milestone
10
11
- -*• - Presymbolic
—•—Emerging Symbolic
— * - Advanced Symbolic
Figure 2. Age estimates (in months) for each of the 11 language
milestones in mothers of presymbolic, emerging symbolic, and advanced
symbolic children.
and 2) to occur until between 10 and 12 months, imitations
(Level 5) to occur at 16.6 months, and single words of possession (Level 7) to occur at 19.1 months; mothers of younger
children considered the three activities to occur at the ages of
7 to 8 months, 12.6 months, and 17.6 months on average. Exceptions were for estimates about the onsets of multiword utterances, which were generally similar across the three groups. The
interaction between stage and language level was not significant.
Discussion
In the first few years of life, children exhibit rapid advances
in their mental abilities, as evidenced in the way they act on the
objects in their environment (through play) and communicate
socially (through language). Prior investigations of children's
unfolding representational abilities have demonstrated that
mothers tailor their play and language interactions to match the
rapidly changing abilities and needs of their young children. For
example, mothers match their children's play levels during free-
Results indicated that mothers are knowledgeable about developments in play and language and that this knowledge is
reasonably stable over a short-term period. These findings indicate that mothers have formulated relatively accurate schemas
about specific areas of children's accomplishments and that
these schemas are stably a part of mothers' knowledge base at
least over brief time periods. It is possible that the stability
we identified in mothers' knowledge about these two domains
reflects, in part, mothers' memory of their previous judgments
rather than consistent variation in mothers' underlying knowledge. The fact that mothers made judgments on a total of 110
different pairs at each visit makes it unlikely, however, that they
would remember their responses to individual items.
The findings on play sensitivity replicate and extend findings
by Tamis-LeMonda et al. (1994) by focusing on both play and
language knowledge in a different population. To our knowledge, this is the first investigation to examine mothers' awareness of specific linguistic milestones. It is clear that mothers
are highly accurate in their judgments about first- to secondyear achievements in children's communication.
It is important to note that the levels of mothers' knowledge
that we identified for both play and language are likely to be
underestimates of the true levels of mothers' accuracy. That is,
the empirical orderings of play and language items that we used
in the present study were based on a careful and comprehensive
compilation of extant findings on observations of children's play
and language developments in their first few years. However,
the play and language progressions that are documented in the
literature are based on developmental trends observed in groups
of children. Group data can mask the substantial variation that
exists among individual children in the achievement of representational milestones (see McCall et al., 1977, for discussion).
In this regard, the ordering of play and language items to which
parents' judgments were compared should not be considered
rigid "gold standards" but rather "best estimates" of general
developmental trends in play and language. Insofar as different
mothers have experienced different developmental histories with
122
T A M I S - L E M O N D A , CHEN, AND BORNSTEIN
their children, their own reported estimates of developmental
milestones might reflect those histories. Consequently, mothers'
orderings of play and language milestones, as well as their
estimates of ages of onset in the two domains, might have been
even more accurate than reported here if the developmental
trajectories of their own children, rather than children in general,
had been the standard.
In general, mothers' knowledge about language development
appeared to be significantly stronger than their knowledge about
play development. This difference might reflect the strong emphasis that is placed on children's language achievements in the
United States and the widespread use of language milestones
as manifest indicators of underlying transitions in children's
cognitive growth. As a consequence of (his societal emphasis,
language achievements may be salient to mothers, or mothers
may be especially motivated to seek out information about early
and normative development in this domain. In contrast to the
historical emphasis that is placed on language, research on the
cognitive underpinnings of play and the diagnostic value of play
achievements for the current and future cognitive performance
of children is less well known or appreciated.
Alternatively, mothers' knowledge about play may appear to
be less accurate than their knowledge about language because
more mature play activities do not ' 'replace'' less mature activities in the same way that more mature forms of language replace
less mature forms. That is, even a child who is able lo engage in
sequenced, substitutive, and vicarious play will still intersperse
object manipulations and basic nonsymbolic play with these
more advanced levels of pretense. In contrast, a child who is
well beyond a two-word stage of language development will
rarely engage in immature forms of babbling. Such structural
features in language make it likely that most people would order
prelinguistic utterances before single-word utterances before
multiword utterances. In addition, the seeming lesser accuracy
of mothers' knowledge about play versus language may be the
result of differences in the robustness of the ordering of play
versus language activities across children. That is, if individual
children follow somewhat unique trajectories in their play development, and if there is more variability across children in the
development of play than in the development of language, then
mothers' lesser accuracy in judging play might reflect this
greater variability. Indeed, children's play has been shown to
be influenced by personal modes or styles of expression (e.g.,
Dixon&Shore, 1993; Gardner & Wolf, 1978; Wolf & Grollman,
1982), and these distinct styles will certainly influence mothers'
judgments about certain forms of play. Together, the greater
societal emphasis placed on language and the structural characteristics of broad levels of language, such as the fact that mature
forms replace rather than add to less mature forms, might explain why mothers tended to be more accurate at ordering language milestones than at ordering play milestones.
As expected, individual mothers varied in their judgments
in the two domains of child development. However, mothers1
knowledge about language development was unrelated to their
knowledge about play development. This finding underscores the
importance of ascribing a multidimensional model to parental
cognitions and beliefs or, at least, to knowledge about developmental milestones in children. An individual ought not be strictly
conceptualized as knowing more or less about children's devel-
opment; rather, knowledge may be specialized and a parent may
know more about achievements in one domain than another. The
areas in which parents are more knowledgeable may depend on
their goals for their children, what they deem lo be important
to their children's future, their children's own competencies and
interests in a specific area, parenting experience, and so forth
(see Bornstein, 1995; Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein, 1996).
Children's developmental stage related to their mothers'
knowledge about children's progress in both domains, as well
as to their judgments about the ages at which children achieve
developmental milestones. Specifically, mothers of prerepresentational and emerging representational children were most accurate in their age estimates of language milestones and mothers
of advanced representational children were least accurate. We
did not expect mothers of prerepresentational children to be as
accurate as mothers of emerging representational children, but
they were. It may be that knowledge about the activities in
children that are soon to occur are primed or salient to mothers
who wish to be prepared for the next step. Consequently, mothers of the youngest children may have been accurate in their
age estimates because they were asked to judge behaviors that
would be relevant to their children in the near future.
In contrast, parents of children who were at more advanced
stages (i.e., those older than 21 months) were less accurate in
judging the developmental onsets of play and language behaviors that emerged during the first and second years of life. As
hypothesized, these mothers consistently overestimated the ages
at which play and language milestones emerged, thereby underestimating the abilities of younger children. The lower accuracy
of these mothers, as well as the direction of error in their age
estimates, accords with the research of DeGrada and Ponzo
(1971) and D'Alessio (1977) in which adults were found to
systematically underestimate the abilities of preschool children.
D'Alessio (1977, 1990) further noted that actual experiences
with children probably only temporarily modify such prejudiced
conceptions of childhood; mothers will return to inaccurate
judgments about the abilities of preschoolers once their children
are older.
In line with these findings, our data indicate that mothers are
cognitively aware of developments in their children's representational competencies, but that awareness tends to be circumscribed to the period surrounding children's current or emerging
abilities. As children develop, mothers' refocus the spotlight of
sensitivity to highlight their children's most recent accomplishments as well as those that are anticipated to occur in the near
future. Riture investigations might examine how variation in
mothers' knowledge about specific areas of child development
affects the quantity and quality of their interactions with children
and, in turn, influences children's early achievements in these
key areas of development.
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Accepted July 7, 1997 •
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