THE EFFECTS OF SECURITY OF ATTACHMENT AND MATERNAL ATTRIBUTION OF MEANING ON CHILDRENS LINGUISTIC ACQUISITIONAL STYLE

Individual differences in children's linguistic acquisitional style we re investigated with respect to infantile security of attachment and m others' proclivity to attribute meaning to their children's early voca lizations. In contrast to children in the insecure group, the 25 item vocabularies of securely attached children contained a higher proporti on of common nouns and a lower proportion of frozen phrases. Securely attached children were also found to have larger vocabularies at 20 mo nths. Mothers of securely attached children were more likely than thei r counterparts in the insecure group to attribute meaning to their chi ldren's early vocalizations. This proclivity on the mother's part was related to a high proportion of common nouns and a low proportion of f rozen phrases in the child's vocabulary. It is argued that these findi ngs may illustrate the secure group mothers' mind-mindedness, or prope nsity to treat their infants as individuals with minds.