Reports on a study indicating children's dependency in oral persuasion on the cooperative nature of dialog and nonverbal vocalizations and their dependence in written persuasion on persuasive strategies found in speech that can be transferred to writing and, concomitantly, their relatively infrequent use of persuasive strategies specific to…

Finds no significant effects of an instructional intervention on students' persuasive writing at two grade levels (third and fifth). Determines the categories and types of written persuasion used by students at four grade levels (third, fifth, 10th, and 12th). (SR)

Reports findings from a think-aloud protocol study of reading, writing, and persuasive processes in legal discourse during an actual appellate court case. Discusses three aspects of advocates' use of persuasive techniques in written appeal briefs. Focuses on specific persuasive techniques utilized by attorneys. (HB)

Studies the discourse competence of mentally retarded residents of a group home by examining their arguments. Shows how their arguments exhibited useful patterns and gave evidence of being an acceptable and sought after discourse genre. Outlines the features of the residents' argument patterns. (HB)

Presents an interpretive study of 1 family's discourse concerning aggression between 2 brothers (9-years, 9-months and 11-years, 11-months old). Analyzes 10 parental strategies, representing all the turns within a long conversation in which parents took the lead in promoting their younger son's narrative and logical understanding of his offensive…

Describes the essential factors of developmental changes in argumentative writing behavior of children between the ages of 10 and 16, in particular on 4 tasks: an argumentative writing task, a textuality task, an argumentative script inference task, and an argumentativity judgment task. (SR)

Explores the kinds of persuasion used by preschool children in two role-playing tasks. Finds that children role played effectively and persistently, with Bargains and Guarantees the most frequently used strategies. Finds that the choice of strategies changed with age (more Positive Sanction, less Assertion) and with sex (boys used more Norm…

Focuses on courtroom speech as it occurs when a lay person interacts with an attorney and proposes a framework that includes a (1) macrostructural description of direct and cross-examination sequences as contexts that condition the interaction, and (2) microanalytical model that accounts for the effectiveness of the question-and-answer examination…

Examines the role of nontext social knowledge on elementary school children and college students' understanding of protagonist-antagonist stories, noting some developmental changes in the understanding of these stories based on knowledge of persuasion. (FL)