Nonverbal indicants of comprehension and noncomprehension in children.

Abstract

This study sought to identify and describe nonverbal indicants of comprehension and noncomprehension in young listeners in the context of referential communication. Relationships between the children's verbal and nonverbal behavior were also examined. Children at 4, 6, 8, and 10 years of age served as listeners. An adult speaker produced messages of varying informational adequacy. Analyses of videotape records revealed that children at each of the four ages exhibited markedly different nonverbal behavior in response to informative as compared to uninformative messages. In the absence of verbal responding, children at all ages showed more hand movement and longer reaction times when messages were uninformative. Preschoolers made more eye contact with the speaker when the message was uninformative, but their amount of body movement was unaffected; the reverse was true for kindergartners and second graders. The data also revealed that when verbal responding was initiated, it was simply added onto the already established patterns of nonverbal behavior; no evidence was found for the hypothesis that verbal responding replaces or substitutes for nonverbal responses.Although considerable research has been exceptions (e.g., Ironsmith & Whitehurst, devoted to the study of children 's nonverbal 1978b; Peterson, Banner, & Flavell, 1972), behavior in recent years (Blurton-Jones, the possible role of nonverbal cues in chil-1972;Knapp, 1972), little is known about the dren's referential communication has been role of nonverbal signals in the development overlooked. In this study, we sought to of referential communication. Research has identify nonverbal indicants of comprefocused on children's developing verbal hension and noncomprehension in young abilities as speakers (Glucksberg & Krauss, listeners and to examine the manner in 1967; Krauss & Glucksberg, 1969) and lis-which verbal and nonverbal responses to teners (Cosgrove & Patterson, 1977; Iron-referential clarity and ambiguity are cosmith & Whitehurst, 1978a; Patterson, ordinated. Massad, & Cosgrove, 1978), but with rareThe data were collected in the context of another study of children's communication

The Growth of Flexible Problem Solving: Preschool Children Use Changing Verbal Cues to Infer Multiple Word Meanings

“…In problems with several possible answers, pre-schoolers tend to "settle" on the most apparent response to the first problem, then reproduce that response (after a cursory analysis or no analysis) for subsequent problems (Speer, 1984;Vurpillot, 1968). Detection of indeterminacy improves somewhat around 5 or 6 years of age (Fabricius, Sophian, & Wellman, 1987;Patterson, Cosgrove, & O'Brien, 1980;Revelle, Wellman, & Karabenick, 1985), around the time children become consistently flexible in the novel word task. Thus, ability to detect indeterminacy might contribute to age differences in flexibility in the novel word induction task (Experiments 1 and 2) Although the two-factor hypothesis requires further investigation, several other findings are generally consistent.…”

A Helping Hand in Assessing Children's Knowledge: Instructing Adults to Attend to Gesture

“…For example, researchers have shown that children display how certain they are about a concept through body posture (C. J. Patterson, Cosgrove, & O'Brien, 1980), body movements and eye contact (Machida, 1986), and facial expressions (Flavell, Speer, Green, & August, 1981).…”

Teachers' Responses to Children's Eye Gaze

“…Four-, 6-and 8 year olds shifted their posture more and used more hand movements when listening to uninformative referential messages compared to informative messages (Patterson, Cosgrove & O'Brien, 1980). In addition, Machida (1986) found that first graders reduced eye contact, did more head-tilting, and used excessive hand and body movements when listening to difficult versus easy lessons.…”