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Addressee co-operation and request reformulation in young children
1Laboratoire de PsyDEE, Université de Paris 5-CNRS, France.
Journal of Child Language
|October 1, 1994
Summary
Young children adapt their requests based on adult responses, demonstrating early communicative and conversational skills. This study observed French-speaking toddlers aged 1.5 and 2.5 years adapting their communication strategies.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistic Development
- Child Communication
Background:
- Children's early communication involves adapting to social feedback.
- Understanding how toddlers modify requests is key to early social-cognitive development.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if children under 3 years old can reformulate requests based on addressee responses.
- To identify adaptive communicative and conversational skills in young children.
Main Methods:
- Observing 24 French-speaking children (12 at 1;6 and 12 at 2;6 years old) in object request scenarios.
- Analyzing verbal and nonverbal outputs in response to request satisfaction, clarification, or refusal.
Main Results:
- Children adapted their request strategies similarly at both 1;6 and 2;6 years.
- Clarification situations led to more vocalizations and repairs.
- Refusal situations showed increased non-reformulations and visual attention shifts.
Conclusions:
- Toddlers demonstrate adaptive communication skills by modifying requests based on interactional feedback.
- These findings highlight the early development of sophisticated communicative and conversational abilities in children.