This study investigated the complex relationship between false-belief (FB) understanding, structural language and pragmatic communication in typically developing children. A total of 78 Finnish children, aged from 4 to 6 years, including an equal number of boys and girls, participated in this study. In the first instance, the study explored the…

Young children's communication is dependent upon caregivers' responsiveness to their behaviors; however, little is known about the responsiveness of toddler teachers to children in their classrooms. To increase teachers' responsiveness to children's behavior, a peer-coaching model was implemented in three Early Head Start classrooms. The…

The listener-oriented presupposition is defined as a covert proposition related in some way to the listener and associated with a given utterance which the speaker must believe to be true if that utterance is to be judged functional by the listener. It is proposed that listener-oriented presuppositions fall into the following three classes: class…

Both 4- and 7-year-old children readily reformulated their initial messages when explicitly requested to do so by the listener, and both failed to reformulate when confronted only with nonverbal, facial expressions of listener noncomprehension. (Authors)

Two children were observed for half a year and specific topics were examined in child communication: how much information is transmitted through various channels of verbal and nonverbal communication? Is specific information transmitted through specific channels? Can relationships between the channels be expressed through some type of formula?…

The early communication network existing between a mother and her 12-week-old infant was explored. Over 50 infants of both sexes from a variety of social classes were seen in their homes, and a wide variety of maternal and infant behaviors were studied. Of special interest was the vocalization-in-communication data. The results indicate a lawful,…

Examines children's everyday discourse processes in three early education settings to document how friendship relations are produced in everyday discursive practices. Results indicate the importance of viewing friendship as a collective and cultural process. (CFR)

The prelinguistic child's attempts at communication cannot be viewed as rudimentary language. More than cataloguing overt acts, we need to understand the functional character of both language and non-language communication capabilities, and in particular the maturational stages of the internal communication systems that produce overt behavior in…

Based on a common sense approach to childrearing, the first of two booklets offers advice to Ponca parents on communicating with their children. Eleven rules of good parenting pertaining to parent and child communication are given. These rules include: be willing to talk about anything and everything with your children; remember the importance of…

This study examines ways in which children verbalize emotional experiences at successive age levels. Four groups of 16 boys and girls each drawn from the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth grades of a middle class private school in New York City were asked to describe happiness, sadness, love, anger, and fear. Raw protocols were scored according to…