The Effects of Age, Sex, and Listener Feedback on Grade School Children's Referential Communication

Karabenick, Julie D.; Miller, Scott A.

doi:10.2307/1128674

Cited by 23 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Our interest in the possible interaction between forms of introduction and listeners' responses was triggered by examining the quite substantial body of research on the development of communication skills, which frequently highlights the shortcomings of young listeners in providing feedback to a speaker when they did not understand a message that they had received (Dittman, 1972;Bearison & Levey, 1977;Cosgrove & Patterson, 1977;Karabenick & Miller, 1977;Ironsmith & Whitehurst, 1978;Patterson & Kister, 1981 ;Beal & Flavell, 1982). The research in this area, however, rarely concerns the linguistic FORM of the messages which young listeners ignore, being more concerned with the information content of the message or the age or experience of the listener.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introducing information in dialogues: forms of introduction chosen by young speakers and the responses elicited from young listeners

1991

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Young speakers in dialogue must establish mutual knowledge. Traditionally, researchers have focused on how children used indefinite and definite articles to signal novel and shared information. In this study of 170 children aged seven to thirteen, the form of introduction chosen, whether question or statement, is more significant than the type of article used. No developmental effects on article use emerge, with statement + indefinite always the least common choice. However, young speakers use question introductions significantly less than older children. There is also a developmental interaction between speakers' and listeners' behaviour. Question introduction elicit effective listener responses at all ages, but only twelve-year-olds respond reliably to statements. Unfortunately, young speakers prefer just those forms of introduction to which young listeners are least likely to provide informative feedback. Thus two separate developmental effects appear to combine to hamper young subjects' chances of achieving successful communication in dialogues.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introducing information in dialogues: forms of introduction chosen by young speakers and the responses elicited from young listeners

1991

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“…Developmental differences in comprehension monitoring have been demonstrated on a variety of tasks (Cosgrove & Patterson, 1977, 1978Dittman, 1972;Ironsmith & Whitehurst, 1978;Karabenick & Miller, 1977;Markman, 1977Markman, , 1979Patterson, Massad, & Cosgrove, 1978;Flavell, Speer, Green, & August, Note 1). Depending on the kind and amount of processing needed to uncover the problem, children's sensitivity to the problem will vary (see Markman, in press, for some speculations about how information about one's comprehension can be obtained).…”

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confidence: 99%

Children's ability to adjust their standards for evaluating comprehension.

Markman

Gorin²

1981

Journal of Educational Psychology

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Children 8 and 10 years of age listened to essays that contained either false statements or inconsistencies. They were asked to indicate which essays had problems with them. One group of children was simply informed that some of the essays contained problems. A second group of children was additionally told that some of the statements would be false and was given examples of falsehoods. A third group was told instead that some of the essays would be inconsistent and was given examples of inconsistencies. Under neutral instructions, the rate of problem detection was quite low for both age groups. Specific instructions helped children find problems. Moreover, the relative order of difficulty in finding falsehoods and inconsistencies shifted depending on the instructional set, suggesting that the instructions enabled children to adjust their standard of evaluation.

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“…One possible explanation in terms of mutual understanding is that, in the case of ambiguous messages, it is better to ask something general rather than asking nothing. So making General CR might be a good strategy for young children, because they might start to be aware that messages may be misunderstood, but they might still struggle with monitoring the possible origins or causes of conversational breakdowns (see, for example: Karabenick and Miller 1977 ). However, with age children develop their communicative skills, and learn to make more specific clarification requests, so General CR are no longer related to high-level ToM skills, and are even related to low-level skills.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this respect, from the age of 6 years, children start producing linguistic expressions more appropriate to the viewpoint of the listener, producing sentences that contain enough information to avoid ambiguity (Nilsen and Fecica 2011 ). However, despite their early capacity for realizing that messages may be ambiguous, children aged from 5 to 7 years still have problems giving helpful information so their conversational partner can solve ambiguities, even when the receiver acknowledges that the referent has not been understood (Karabenick and Miller 1977 ). In fact, one of the difficulties that referential communication represents for children is perceiving which characteristics of a given referent are the most relevant for communicative acts, or what distinguishes one referent from the others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Is Theory of Mind Important for Referential Communication?

et al. 2016

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This research studies the relation between children’s Theory of Mind (ToM) and the communicative behaviour and strategies used in a referential communication task. A total of 46 children (aged 6 to 10) were administered 6 ToM tasks, and they also participated in pairs in a cooperative task. Each pair built 4 construction models. Results showed that several ToM skills were related to the communicative behaviours of requesting clarification and giving information. In addition, the most used communicative strategy was Joint review, in which participants reviewed together the location of their blocks. This strategy was the most related to ToM abilities and to cooperative success. The importance of ToM for developing the communicative behaviours and strategies necessary for cooperation is discussed.

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The Effects of Age, Sex, and Listener Feedback on Grade School Children's Referential Communication

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

Introducing information in dialogues: forms of introduction chosen by young speakers and the responses elicited from young listeners

Introducing information in dialogues: forms of introduction chosen by young speakers and the responses elicited from young listeners

Children's ability to adjust their standards for evaluating comprehension.

Why Is Theory of Mind Important for Referential Communication?

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