Speech and language correlates of adults' judgments of children

This two-part study explored the influence that a preschool-aged child's communication behavior has on the impression he or she makes on adults. First, the semantic differential technique was used to reveal the dimensions that describe the adults' judgments of these children. Four adult judges listened to 140 2-min samples of children conversing with an adult and rated the children on 24 bipolar adjective scales. Factor analysis of the ratings produced a three-dimensional structure (Dynamism, Maturity, and Appeal) that accounted for 80% of the total variance in the judgement data. Next, the association between six selected speech and language behaviors and the judgements on each of these dimensions were examined. Rate of speech, fluency of speech, participation in the conversation, complexity of sentences, and grammaticality of utterances were not highly correlated with adults' impressions. However, level of phonological accuracy did correlate with adults' perceptions of degree of maturity.