220 Caregiver attitudes and beliefs related to child language development: Perspectives from two Aboriginal Communities Sophie Nicholls, Jill Vaughan, Caroline Jones, Gillian Wigglesworth, Delvean Ahfat, Tiarnah Ahfat and Lee Rosas In this paper we report on the design and implementation of an interview-based study into caregiver attitudes and beliefs about child language acquisition in two remote Aboriginal Australian communities. Language socialisation plays a crucial role in children’s cognitive, social and cultural development, and the child-caregiver relationship is a fundamental site in this process. As in any study of language socialisation, a key focus is to gain insight into the underlying values and beliefs that govern social interaction within a given community (Ochs & Sheiffelin 1984). The two Arnhemland communities included in our study represent very different language ecologies, but together exemplify the sociolinguistic variation that typifies Aboriginal Australia. The first is Barunga, a small community where a variety of Kriol is the predominant language spoken. The second is Maningrida, a community of around 2000 people where fourteen distinct languages are spoken, with most individuals able to speak between two and six (Elwell 1982; Handelsmann 1996). The interview structure ranges across four main themes: (i) the ‘development of learning/milestones’; (ii) multi-party vs. dyadic input and competence; (iii) accommodation to the infant, verbal and environmental; and (iv) autonomy of the infant. These themes were identified from Language Socialisation literature (e.g. Kulick and Schieffelin 2004) and literature on child development in Aboriginal Australia (e.g. Philpott 2003; Hamilton 1981; Kruske et al 2012; Byers et al 2012; Lowell et al 1996). Thus far the interviews have indicated that the stages of childhood development can be characterized in locally salient ways, for example beibiwan ‘baby’; biganini ‘small child’ and bigwanbigwan ‘grown/adult young person’ at Barunga. These terms are defined in terms of physical development as well as the child’s capabilities, such as clear speech, being able to care for ones self, as well as specific cultural milestones such as Initiation Ceremonies. We found that interview questions worked best when specific children from target age range were referred to elicit developmental stage e.g. “Would you use baby talk to ‘children like John?’ (children aged 2-3)”. We also found that questions that contained inherent comparison or judgments of other people were not appropriate, for example the following two questions were deleted after workshopping with co-researchers in the community: 1. What kinds of things do mums and dads have to think about that people without kids don’t need to think about?