“Let's make a place where giants live!”: Children's communication during play with siblings and friends from early to middle childhood

Abstract

The present study examined children's co‐construction of shared meanings and internal state language during play with their sibling and friend from early to middle childhood. Sixty‐five 4‐year‐old children (T1) and 46 7‐year‐old children (T2) were observed in the home during two free play sessions with a sibling and with a friend at both time points. Shared meaning strategies during social play (e.g., extensions and positive responses) and during pretend enactment were coded. Shared meaning strategies were associated with relationship context; children used more positive shared meaning strategies with friends compared to siblings and more introductions with siblings than friends. Moreover, developmental differences were evident; specifically, children employed more simple strategies, semantic tying (e.g., building on to one's ideas) and prosocial strategies at T2 than T1. Differences were also evident during pretend enactment where children used simple strategies more at T2 than T1 and clarifications more at T1 than T2. Findings highlight children's sophisticated and flexible communication strategies used in the process of co‐constructing a shared understanding during play. Highlights The present study investigated children's shared meaning strategies used during play with their sibling and friend from early to middle childhood. Children were observed in separate play sessions and both relationship and developmental differences were found. The patterns of findings highlight important similarities and differences in children's co‐;construction of shared meanings with siblings and friends over time.

Children's connectedness and shared meanings strategies during play with siblings and friends

“…Clarification strategies were also employed to sustain connectedness in line with the literature (Göncü, 1993;Howe et al, 2005;Leach et al, 2015Leach et al, , 2019b along with a trend for positive responses. Clarifications may elicit positive responses and the two behaviours complement one another, thus suggesting reciprocal turn-taking is critical aspect of play communications (Garvey, 1990;Göncü, 1993).…”

“…That is, are children's play communications organized in a coordinated, reciprocal fashion or are they seemingly disorganized? To begin, to answer this question, Leach et al (2019b) first investigated children's ability to co-construct sustained connected play sequences from early to middle childhood with their siblings and friends; connectedness was defined as sequences characterized by continuous, socially coordinated, and mutually constructed verbal exchanges (Fogel, 1993;Harrist & Waugh, 2002). Leach et al reported focal children's ability to co-construct and sustain connected play sequences with both their sibling and friend were associated with a positive emotional tone of their interactions; they were also increasingly cooperative from early to middle childhood.…”

“…First, which shared meanings strategies do children use to initiate connectedness and are there differences across relationship contexts and developmental periods? We anticipated that children would use introductions to initiate connectedness most often (Howe et al, 2005;Leach et al, 2015Leach et al, , 2019b. We also expected that children would use clarifications (e.g., questions) to initiate connectedness because the strategy is meant to elicit a response from the partner and may be a means to quickly establish a shared meaning in the play.…”

“…We also expected that children would use clarifications (e.g., questions) to initiate connectedness because the strategy is meant to elicit a response from the partner and may be a means to quickly establish a shared meaning in the play. We predicted that children would use prosocial strategies (e.g., sharing) more often with friends than siblings due to the more positive exchanges that characterize friendships (Bukowski et al, 2018;Leach et al, 2015Leach et al, , 2019b) and more nonmaintenance strategies (e.g., control behaviours) with their sibling given the greater range of affectively intense interactions in this relationship (Dunn, 2015;Howe et al, 2022).…”

“…Semantic tying and responses are extensions to the partner's previous utterance, thus are likely to sustain the interaction if the strategies elicit a response from the partner. To this end, we predicted children would use positive strategies (e.g., prosocial, positive responses) with their friend to sustain connectedness (Leach et al, 2015(Leach et al, , 2019b. We also expected children would use semantic tying strategies (e.g., extending their own ideas) more at age 7 than age 4 due to increasingly sophisticated social-cognitive and language abilities.…”