Intersubjectivity and empathy in caregiver-child interaction

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K04091
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Sociology
• Research Institution: University of Tsukuba
• Principal Investigator: Takagi Tomoyo 筑波大学, 人文社会系, 准教授 (00361296)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 会話分析 / 子ども / 相互行為 / 社会的行為 / 理解可能性

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aimed to reveal, through the detailed qualitative analysis of naturalistic data from real-life interactions, how it is made possible for social actions produced by young children to be appropriately understood and responded to by their caregivers. Focusing on three phenomena involving a certain utterance type whose linguistic formulation appears to be more or less incomplete or equivocal about what action is being implemented through the utterance (i.e. utterances consisting of a simple past-tense verb referring to the child's past action, [NP+ wa?]-formatted utterances, and utterances by a child with autism spectrum disorder) , this study has shown that all of these three utterance types are produced within extremely rich interactional environments, and when adult participants can appropriately tap into them, they collaboratively establish mutual understanding and engage in developing further interactional sequences with young children.

Free Research Field

会話分析

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

言語発達過程における幼児の発話は、その言語形式のみに注目すると「不完全さ」が目立つが、その発話が産出された状況を細やかに捉えると、むしろ、幼児の状況の理解や他者の視点の獲得を示すものであることを明らかにした。また、自閉症スペクトラム児の一見不可解な発話も、様々な水準でその発話の産出の状況を分析することによって、理解可能であることを示した。こうした視点は、特定の参加者によるコミュニケーション能力の未発達・非定型発達を理由に相互理解の不可能を主張する立場に対して疑問を呈し、相互理解はあくまでも「協同的」に達成されるものであることを主張する。