Young children's sensitivity to direct and indirect request structure

Abstract

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.