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Addressee co-operation and request reformulation in young children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Haydée Marcos  and
Josie Bernicot
Haydée Marcos*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de PsyDEE, Université de Paris 5-CNRS
Josie Bernicot*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de PsyDEE, Université de Paris 5-CNRS
*
Laboratoire de Psychologie du Développement et de l'Education, 46 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France.
Laboratoire de Psychologie du Développement et de l'Education, 46 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France.
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Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to show that children under age 3;0 are capable of reformulating requests in different ways depending on how their addressee responds to the request. This adaptive ability is considered to be an indication of the use of both communicative and conversational skills. Children from French-speaking families were observed at two developmental thresholds: the end of the prelinguistic period (1;6) and the start of the linguistic period (2;6). The verbal and nonverbal outputs of the two groups of 12 children (1;6 and 2;6) were compared in three object request situations: the adult immediately complies with the request (satisfaction), the adult asks a clarification question (clarification), and the adult refuses to comply with the request (refusal). The ways in which the children adapted to each situation were found to be similar at the two ages considered. In the clarification situation, vocal productions and their repairs were more numerous, whereas in the refusal situation, non-reformulations and gazes to and from the requested object and addressee predominated. The discussion deals with the significance of these results in the development of communicative and conversational skills in children.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , October 1994 , pp. 677 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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Footnotes

[*]

The authors wish to thank Severin Prené and Sylvie Sanvicens for their contribution in this study, as well as the staff and children of the Seine and Marne (France) day care centres, who made this experiment possible.

References

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