Repetition and Repair Strategies : Within Reminiscing Conversations Between Parents and Children with Language Disorders

Abstract

Parents of typically developing children often use two main reminiscing styles: elaborative and repetitive. Elaborative reminiscing benefits children’s language and literacy, social and self-understanding, and the quality of the parent-child relationship. Parents of children with language disorders tend to use more repetitions than elaborations when reminiscing. For children with a language disorder, mother’s repetitive questions were related to child elaborations. The repetitions facilitate the conversation by allowing the mother to elicit information from children with language disorders, who may be less responsive. Previous research found children with language disorders are typically more off-topic than typically developing children. SLPs are encouraged to facilitate reminiscing with children on our caseloads.