By Betty Hart, Ph.D., & Todd R. Risley, Ph.D.

This much-awaited companion to the award-winning Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children reveals how daily child-parent social interactions govern children's language and social development.

Based on unparalled data from 2-1/2 years of observing the everyday interactions of 1- and 2-year-old children learning to talk in their own homes, Hart and Risley have charted the month-by-month growth of the children's vocabulary, utterances, and use of grammatical structures. The compelling narrative highlights reliability-tested research findings and is supplemented with numerous transcripts from observations and a list of 2,000 words of children's expressive vocabulary from 19-36 months of age.

This book is must-reading for professionals in speech and language, child development, psychology, and education who need to understand how children come to talk as much and as well as their parents and caregivers.

List of Tables and Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments

1. The Social Dance of American Family Life
2. Observing Children and Families Talking
3. A Social World
4. Developmental Change
5. Becoming Partners
6. Staying and Playing
7. Practicing
8. The Range Among Well-Functioning Families
9. Meaningful Differences
10. Talking as a Social Dance

References

Appendix A: Child Vocabulary in 100 Utterances, 19-36 Months

Appendix B: Steps in Describing the Social Dance

Appendix C: Steps in Explicating the Social Dance

Index