Taking a dialogic approach, this edited book engages in analysis and description of dialogic discourse in a number of different educational contexts, from early childhood to tertiary, with an international team of contributors from Australia, Finland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The chapters focus mostly on dialogic face-to-face discourse,…

This study investigated the dynamics of complex interactions within inquiry-based (IB) discussions by visualizing patterns using social network analysis. Researchers explored network measures when learners participated in inquiry-based discussions with Practical Inquiry Model (PIM) and non-PIM questions while playing the weekly moderator's role.…

This volume sheds empirical light on Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) by providing five sets of analyses of two longitudinal, interactional datasets, involving two dyads exchanging emails over one academic semester. The collective study on CDST is the first of its kind, in that it delves into multiple subsystems of learner language,…

Establishing a communication-rich classroom can be difficult. This article describes the process and findings of a practitioner action research study addressing the question of how teachers can interact with their students while they are working in groups to encourage and enhance student-to-student communication. Recommended research-based teacher…

Coding systems have become popular methods of cataloging the verbal and nonverbal interaction occurring during marital and family therapy. One such system, Pinsof's (1981) Family Therapist Coding System (FTCS), was the first designed explicitly to identify and differentiate specific verbal behaviors of family therapists independent of their…

Haley (1963) described the counseling relationship in terms of the patterns of communicative behavior exchanged by the interactants. To investigate Haley's assertion that successful counseling is characterized by the counselor's control of the definition of the counseling relationship as a complementary relationship in which the counselor is in a…

Maternal wait time after open- and closed-ended questions with eight Down syndrome (DS) and eight language-age (LA) matched peers was investigated. Mothers provided a longer mean wait time for LA children (2.5 seconds) than for DS children (1.8 seconds). These wait times matched well with children's usual response times. No differences for…

This study examined the conversational engagement techniques employed by children with and without learning disabilities in dyadic interactions. Analysis indicated that the 60 learning-disabled subjects (9-13 years old) employed engagement-related techniques as sophisticated as those of their nondisabled peers, though they did so less consistently…

Research has shown that females gaze more than males while speaking and listening regardless of the sex of their partner. To determine if these differences are due to biological sex or sex role, 24 dyads, in which subjects were matched on sex and sex role, conversed for 10 minutes while patterns of speech and gaze were recorded by two judges.…

Reports development as compared to age-related changes in maternal task instruction to children in their second year. Interactions of 12 mother-infant pairs involved with simple tasks were video-recorded bimonthly between the infants' 14th and 22nd month. Comparison revealed the superiority of the development-centered model of adaptation of…

Comparison of instructional versus non-instructional roles on the interactions of general education high school students and their peers with disabilities found that during the non-instructional role condition, students engaged in more social-related than activity-related interactions, discussed a greater variety of conversational topics, and…

Twenty children with autism received either an imitative or contingently responsive interaction with an adult. The contingency condition appeared to be the more effective way to facilitate a distal social behavior (attention), whereas the imitative condition was a more effective way to facilitate a proximal social behavior (touching). (Contains…

A sociolinguistic, semantic analysis of intonation was conducted on a 15-minute natural interaction between an aphasic speaker, his wife, and his neighbor. Findings indicated the neighbor made more use of two dimensions of intonation, specifically pitch movements referring to shared information and marked tones, when addressing the aphasic speaker…

Families were compared at one, three, and nine months to examine the effects of active or passive exposure to the Brazelton Neonatal Behavior Assessment. Either the mother or both parents were the target of the intervention. Assessments of interaction behavior between parents and infants revealed no effects of the experimental intervention.…

The study with 18 children with Down Syndrome (DS), their mothers, and a control group replicated previous findings that mothers of DS children are more directive and identified qualitative differences in types of directives (e.g., mothers of DS children were more likely to request actions) suggesting differences in maternal interactive…