Affiliation:
1. University of Waterloo,
2. University of Waterloo
Abstract
In the absence of scaffolding provided by adults or a play situation, what topics will preschoolers raise in attempting to begin conversations with each other? This study provides a first in-depth examination of preschoolers’ peer-to-peer conversational initiations. The snack-time conversations of a class of 25 preschool children were videotaped bi-weekly for 21 weeks; 507 conversational initiations were identified and classified according to a detailed coding scheme that included utterance type (e.g., comment, question), person or object referent, person referenced (e.g., self, listener), and, of particular interest, reference to mental states. Of all initiations, 77.5% referenced persons (41.2% listener) and almost 30% referenced mental states, suggesting preschoolers are using their developing understanding of mind in finding common ground with peers.
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Education,Language and Linguistics
Cited by
12 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献