First Language

Child language has been largely concerned with language develop ment in 'dyadic'context. Pre-school children's triadic and polyadic language skills, linguistic and social interactional skills necessary for interacting with more than two people, were identified and examined. Third party (or person) reference is considered, as an intrinsically triadic language form. Utilizing third party reference in a videotaped setting, the first study examines 3;5- to 4;5-aged children's responses to name overhearing and identifies a non-random response pattern indi cative of conversation monitoring ability. The second study looking at three age groups (2;5 to 5;5) examines the development of this ability and investigates reasons for the response pattern observed. The results identify a transitional stage, linking conversation monitoring with group conversational participation, and are discussed with reference to the role of overhearing.

Effects of request structure and listener characteristics on young children's compliance with requests were examined in two experi ments. In Experiment 1, an adult used direct (imperative) requests (e.g., 'Give me ...'/'What is ... ?'), indirect embedded requests (e.g., 'Can you give me ... ?'/`Can you tell me ... ?'), and hint requests (e.g., 'The water is spilling ...'/`I wonder what ...') for action and information. The requests were used with 3- and 5-year- olds (10 at each age) in structured play interactions. Five-year-olds complied with all request forms more often than 3-year-olds. Within action requests, both groups complied with the embedded form most often, followed by the direct then hint forms. Within information requests, they complied with the direct form most often, followed by embedded then hint forms. In Experiment 2, syntactically simple and complex direct and embedded forms were used with 4-year-olds grouped for tested language comprehension ability. The 15 low-ability children complied most frequently with simple direct and simple action requests. The 15 high-ability children surpassed low-ability children in compliance with complex direct, simple embedded, complex action, and simple and complex information requests. In contrast with previous studies, our findings show differential responsiveness to requests as a function of request structure and syntactic complexity as well as age.

One fertile site for exploring the intersection between language development and social cognition is children's ability to resolve social conflict. This study examined children's conversational participation during dispute episodes that occurred during a group decision-making task with peers. Triads of children in grades 1 and 2 were told to reach a group consenus about their ratings of possible gifts for their class. When disputes occurred, children with reading problems were less likely than normal readers to make the 'winning move,' i.e., their opinions were less likely to be accepted by their partners. The implica tions of these findings for children's conversational development and social acceptance are discussed.

Although young children perform speech acts, they do not have a concept of the speech act that older children acquire, and they are not aware of the role that language plays in social interaction. This meta- pragmatic understanding is particularly important for the speech act of promising, since promises are self-referential. Two experiments that investigated children's understanding of promising are reported. In the first, 5- to 11-year-olds had to choose pictures to illustrate sen tences containing expressions of intention or promises; 5-year-olds did not distinguish between the speech act and the action predicated in the speech act. In the second experiment 6- to 10-year-olds had to answer questions following brief stories; 6-year-olds were less likely than older children to say that the promise is the reason for performing a promised action, and 6-year-olds were more likely to focus on events than on language in deciding whether a promise was kept or broken.

Children 4 to 10 years of age were presented with referential messages that varied in message adequacy and speech quality and were required to choose the intended referent from a set of four alternatives. Follow ing feedback regarding their choice, they evaluated the message as good or bad and provided reasons for their evaluation. Half of the messages had sufficient information to define the referent uniquely; half had insufficient or ambiguous information. Moreover, half of the messages were produced by hearing children and half by deaf children. Children's comprehension and evaluation of messages changed sys tematically with age, as did the basis for these evaluations. The 4- and 5-year-olds performed poorly on the picture selection task but evaluated most messages as good; 6-year-olds rated messages as good if they had chosen the correct referent, even by guessing. From 8 years of age, children judged the adequacy of messages independent of outcome and linked their justifications to relevant details of the mes sages. Messages that were fully intelligible to adults but had atypical speech quality resulted in poorer performance and evaluations than did messages with normal speech quality for children of all ages.

Two studies were conducted to examine the effect of children's social cognitions on their ability to monitor their comprehension in the referential communication paradigm. Specifically, it was hypo thesized that children's beliefs about the intentions and cooperative- ness of speakers prevent them from accurately evaluating messages. In Experiment 1, it was found that children who were made aware of the possibility that speakers themselves (rather than simply their words) might refer to more than one referent, were significantly better able to detect referential ambiguity than were children who, as in traditional referential communication studies, assumed that speakers attempted to describe a single referent. In Experiment 2, it was found that children faced with potentially uncooperative or dishonest speakers, carefully examined the words of referential directions and therefore detected more problems with those directions than children faced with honest, if potentially incompetent speakers. The results are discussed in terms of the interaction between the social and linguistic aspects of communication.