2002 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The development of children's pragmatic skills in parent-child triadic interactions
| Project/Area Number |
13610156
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
教育・社会系心理学
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| Research Institution | Bunkyo Gakuin University |
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Principal Investigator |
KASUYA Hiroko Bunkyo Gakuin University, Faculty of Human Studies, Associate Professor, 人間学部, 助教授 (60296291)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
UEMURA Kayoko Bunkyo Gakuin University, Faculty of Human Studies, Professor, 人間学部, 教授 (70213395)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2001 – 2002
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| Keywords | triadic interaction / pragmatics / language development / mother-child interaction / father-child interaction / home observation / conversational analysis / preschooler |
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| Research Abstract |
Highlighting the parental differences and the development of children's social skills in family triadic interactions, we have so far analyzed discourse samples from 10 families observed at two time points. We have highlighted 4 major findings and discuss the implications.
1. Almost all children had higher proportions of Initiation in Time 2 than at Time 1 within the M-trials. However, the proportions of children's Join Topic utterances were very low in both Times across parents. Joining in others' conversation appeared to be difficult even for the children over 3 years old.
2. At both times the children clearly talked to their mothers more often than to anyone else. The mothers' triads may create an encouraging atmosphere for the children to address their mothers. Moreover, the children tried to talk to their sibling in the F-triad more often than in the M-triad at Time 2. It may be most likely that children had to turn to their sibling because their fathers were not responsive to the children or just adopted the attitude of onlooker towards the two children.
3. Fathers used much greater numbers of implied forms than the mothers. This tendency can be explained by Bellinger and Gleason's (1975) study emphasizing fathers as "bridges" between children and the outside world.
4. Siblings' involvement in the conversations with the child appeared to be noticeably different at the two time points. This suggests that older siblings nearing school age take care of their younger siblings by adopting the father's role or taking a go-between role.
We would like to continue to analyze the data from Time 3 to examine how the above findings could change. In all, given the importance of individual differences in oral language skills, there is clearly a need for using a larger sample size and conducting further research on early communication's varied social contexts and the effects of these contexts on a child's acquisition of linguistic and conversational competence.
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