Mother-child interaction and explanations of behaviour

Pages: 156-162
Jyoti Gupta (Keshav Mahavidyalaya University of Delhi, Delhi)
Nandita Babu (Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, Delhi)

Through social interaction children learn to understand, explain and predict behaviour of self and others. Children are always busy with how and why questions needing behavioural explanations. Answers are been sought and given by significant others. The following study was carried out to in-depth into the role of interaction and explanations of behaviour. For this the mothers whose children were in the age of 5 years and 7 years were approached. The mothers were requested to record conversation between them and their children. All the recordings were analyzed with the help of inter rater consistency which was established while coding the verbatim. The results were interpreted in such a way as to look at the strategies that were used to unwind the varieties of explanations of behavior generated during mother-child interaction.