Some Determinants of Effective Communication in Four-Year-Olds

SPILTON, DOREEN, and LEE, LEE C. Some Determinants of Effective Communication in FourYear-Olds. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 968-977. The process by which 4-year-olds adapt their speech to a peer listener during free play was examined. 15 1-hour videotapes of same-sex and mixed-sex dyads engaged in free play were viewed to select instances of verbal exchanges that were initially noncommunicative. For each sequence of this type, speaker and listener responses were coded in terms of clarity, content, and gestures. Results indicated that speakers tended to adapt their subsequent responses to a listener. A contingency analysis was performed in order to assess the effect of listener responses on the speaker's tendency to adapt his speech. The data indicated that speakers may differentially use listener feedback in different communication situations; that is, specific listener questions were significantly better than all other listener responses at eliciting an adaptive speaker response, particularly in sequences in which the communication failure was due to the speaker's unclarity (egocentric sequences).