UCLA

Child development is intricately linked to caregiver interactions, particularly through the use of decontextualized language (DL), a vital component in fostering children’s linguistic and socio-cognitive skills. This dissertation comprises two studies exploring the role of DL in Chinese families during mealtimes and evaluating a DL-focused parental conversational strategy program. DL, involving discussions beyond the immediate context, is considered for its high- quality linguistic input due to its interactive, conceptually challenging, and linguistically complex nature (Snow, 1983; Rowe & Snow, 2020). Study One analyzed the Zhou Dinner corpus (Li & Zhou, 2015), which includes mealtime conversations of 34 Chinese children aged 4-5 years and their families. This study employed a multi-level coding scheme to investigate the variability in DL usage among Chinese families. It found that while mothers frequently utilized a wide range of DL elements, fathers engaged less frequently in DL, though both parents often discussed behavior, other people, and plans. These findings indicate cultural influences on DL use in Chinese families and underscore the importance of both parents’ roles in early language development. The study also identified specific maternal DL strategies that positively correlate with children’s recontextualization, socio-cognitive understanding, and future-oriented thinking. Study Two, involving 48 Chinese parent-child dyads from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and geographic areas, evaluated feasibility and impact of parent-focused conversational strategies training program. Participating parents displayed increased engagement in DL-rich conversations, utilizing more open-ended questions and causal reasoning after receiving the training. Participant feedback resonated with strong satisfaction and receptiveness towards the program. While the training did not yield immediate significant shifts in children's linguistic and socio-cognitive abilities over this short time, a promising trend toward potential benefits was observed. Taken together, this dissertation reveals cultural patterns of DL use within the Chinese context and illustrates the transformative power of DL-focused parental conversational training. These investigations highlight the intricacies and implications of DL in Chinese familial settings, endorsing a multi-methods approach and emphasizing the necessity for diverse cultural explorations in understanding the multifaceted nature of parental language and its role in child development.