2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Children's acquisition of communication styles through triad family interactions
| Project/Area Number |
16530407
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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 |
Social psychology
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| Research Institution | Bunkyo Gakuin University |
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Principal Investigator |
UEMURA Kayoko Bunkyo Gakuin University, Department of Human Sciences, Professor, 人間学部, 教授 (70213395)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KASUYA Hiroko Bunkyo Gakuin University, Department of Human Sciences, Professor, 人間学部, 教授 (60296291)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2006
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| Keywords | communication styles / triad interactions / conversational skills / child / family / parent-child / social interactions |
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| Research Abstract |
By focusing on the ways younger children participated in an ongoing conversation during triadic parent-siblings interactions, this study explored what types of speech acts the children performed and how they were understood by identifying who addressed and responded to whom in each triad. Twenty families with 30-month-old target children and their elder brothers participated in the current study. Mother-child-sibling and father-child-sibling interactions during toy play were observed in their homes. Frequency of parental utterances, also categorized as types of speech acts, was examined and comparisons between the sessions' addressers were made. Also children's participation in an ongoing conversation and types of speech acts between two children were coded and measured. Results indicated that children's participating intentions differed with mothers and fathers, and that parents behaved differently with older and younger siblings. Mothers' utterances coded as 'questions', 'requests', and 'statements' directed clearly to the target children were significantly higher than those directed to the siblings. Both children produced more 'questions' and 'responses' in dyadic conversation between them in mothers' sessions than they produced in fathers' sessions. In contrast, while fathers responded to the target children's 'questions' and 'requests' less frequently than mothers did, the children seemed forced to make more spontaneous utterances to get involved in the conversations already established in fathers' sessions, using longer sentences addressed to fathers. These qualitatively different styles of parental utterances appear to give a good opportunity for children to acquire many aspects of language use. In particular, the findings suggest that those skills children need to foster and practice while interacting with fathers can be the same pragmatic language skills needed to communicate with others outside the home, and thus promote children's socialization.
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Research Products
(1 results)
