A longitudinal study of conversational repairs in Mandarin mother–child interaction

Abstract Research on conversational repairs in adult–child interaction focuses mainly on repairs as conversational skills or as part of a scaffolding process. This study integrated both through a longitudinal investigation of Mandarin mother–child interaction between four mother–child (2–3 years old) dyads, studying the repair types, linguistic levels, and maternal scaffolding strategies. The results showed that self-initiated self-repair (SISR) increased over time, whereas other-initiated self-repair (OISR) and other-initiated other-repair (OIOR) decreased. Moreover, a close relationship was observed between repair strategy and the linguistic level of the trouble source: morpho-syntactic, pragmatic, and lexico-semantic repairs were most frequent in SISR, OISR, and OIOR, respectively. Furthermore, the mothers adjusted their level of support through the strategic use of repair initiations and corrections. The findings suggest that children gradually develop the ability to monitor both their own speech and that of others and that mothers actively facilitate this through adaptive scaffolding strategies.