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Preschool children’s conversational skills for explaining game rules: communicative guidance strategies as a function of type of relationship and gender

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Abstract

Ten trios of children from 4 to 6 years old were observed in a situation where one child (the expert) who had learned the rules of a game explained these rules to two other children at the same time (the novices): one with whom s/he had a positive relationship and the other with whom her/his relationship was negative. Within this asymmetrical situation created artificially, the children functioned on the basis of a complex tutorial contract. The results indicated that, at these young ages, children are capable to strongly manage three dimensions of the explanatory goal: interactional, ideational (management of the object), and linguistic. However, the errors made by the novices were regulated differently, depending on the type of relationship and gender: the experts in boy trios intervened less frequently when errors were made by the novice with whom the relationship was negative (i.e., the not-friend novice) than with the other novice; conversely, the experts in girl trios intervened less frequently when errors were produced by the novice with whom the relationship was positive (i.e., the friend novice) than with the other novice. An analysis of the communicative strategies observed here highlights early sophisticated pragmatic skills in this interactive assigned design.

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Notes

  1. “Recognition in the term ‘explicit recognition’ refers to recognition of the other’s representation of the task and not the social aspects of recognition that we also intend to explore in the present paper, although, of course, the two types of recognition are inextricably intertwined” (Psaltis and Duveen 2007, p. 82).

  2. During the game, girls answered 13 out of 19 questions (68.42 %) from friend novices and 14 out of 16 questions (87.50 %) from not-friend novices; boys answered 27 out of 29 questions (93.10 %) from friend novices and 13 out of 14 (92.85 %) questions from not-friend novices.

  3. Original language: 5 SAR: tu commences [^ SAR gives the die to the not-friend girl novice]; 12 CLEM: c’est toi qui commences Estelle [= friend girl novice]; 3 FLO: alors Charles tu lances le dé et si tu es bleu tu vas là et si tu as vert tu peux commencer [= friend boy novice]; 5 MAR (girl expert); and 10 GUI (boy expert): alors qui c’est qui commence?

  4. In Clementine A's trio (4; 9 years), the expert often said that the novices did not understand anything. Criticism was explicitly addressed once to the not-friend novice: ‘you didn't understand anything.” In Melanie's trio, a criticism is brought to the not-friend novice's attention too: “you are doing just any old thing.”

  5. Among 12 interventions of the rule recall type, 9 used a deontic term, and 3 used a verb in the present tense.

  6. We thank the reviewer for this suggestion.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Vivian Waltz and Maryse Noté for comments on the English style. We also would like to thank Rui Da Silva Neves for methodological advice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département de Psychologie du Développement, Université Toulouse 2, UFR de Psychologie, 5 allées Antonio Machado, 31058, Toulouse Cedex 9, France

    Christine Sorsana

  2. InterPSY Laboratory (E.A. 4432), University of Lorraine, Nancy 2, France

    Christine Sorsana, Nathalie Guizard & Alain Trognon

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  1. Christine Sorsana
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  2. Nathalie Guizard
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Correspondence to Christine Sorsana.

Appendix. Transcription conventions from CHILDES database

Appendix. Transcription conventions from CHILDES database

(.) pause; a longer pause between words is represented as (..), a very long pause as (…), and the exact length in seconds.

Explanations specifying the deictic identity of objects and people are noted as [= text].

Comments are noted as [^ comments].

%act introduces action without words.

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Sorsana, C., Guizard, N. & Trognon, A. Preschool children’s conversational skills for explaining game rules: communicative guidance strategies as a function of type of relationship and gender. Eur J Psychol Educ 28, 1453–1475 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-013-0175-4

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