Changes in mothers' strategies for eliciting verbal responses (EVR's) as a function of child age were investigated in this study. Seven mother-child dyads were observed in their homes when the children were 16, 21, 24, 30, and 34 months of age. Mother EVR's were coded according to syntactic form, type of cue for child response, and complexity of the child's expected response. Developmental trends were apparent across all three dimensions. Diversity of mother EVR's and complexity of expected child response were correlated with increases in the mean length of children's utterances (MLU). Generally, EVR's requiring more complex child responses and providing fewer cues increased with child age and MLU. The mother's feedback for child responses to various cues was correlated with her use of EVR's including those cues, and with complexity of child's expected response. Individual analyses of three hierarchical levels of cues (modeling, direct requests for label, and open-ended information/opinion seeking questions) revealed different developmental trends for each cue level. (Author/RH)