Referential communication as teaching: adults tutoring their own and other children

Abstract

A communication task requiring the negotiation of route directions by telephone was given to related and unrelated adult- child (8 years) pairs. Both parties performed in the roles of sender and receiver of information. It was predicted that related pairs would achieve greater success owing to their previous history of shared experience. There was no difference in success at route- following as a function of relatedness. But kinship did affect the extent to which the variety of strategies used (Components, Numbering, Directional, Minimal) was distributed. The strategies of related pairs correlated much more highly than those of unrelated pairs. An analysis of discourse showed that the use of clarification requests varied with age and that total number of requests made was a sensitive measure of tutorial control. Significantly more requests were made by adults in the opening trials with children assuming equal participation by the end of the task. An interpretation in Vygotskian terms is offered. The limitations of restricting the analysis of referential communication to outcome measures (message adequacy and target selection) was revealed by the amount of negotiation that continued beyond the appearance of such indices.

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