Addressee co-operation and request reformulation in young children

The purpose of the present study was to show that children under age 3;0 are capable of reformulating requests in different ways depending on how their addressee responds to the request. This adaptive ability is considered to be an indication of the use of both communicative and conversational skills. Children from French-speaking families were observed at two developmental thresholds: the end of the prelinguistic period (1;6) and the start of the linguistic period (2;6). The verbal and nonverbal outputs of the two groups of 12 children (1;6 and 2;6) were compared in three object request situations: the adult immediately complies with the request (satisfaction), the adult asks a clarification question (clarification), and the adult refuses to comply with the request (refusal). The ways in which the children adapted to each situation were found to be similar at the two ages considered. In the clarification situation, vocal productions and their repairs were more numerous, whereas in the refusal situation, non-reformulations and gazes to and from the requested object and addressee predominated. The discussion deals with the significance of these results in the development of communicative and conversational skills in children.