The Relationship between How Much is Said and the Quality of the Utterance: Can Young Children Tell the Difference?

Abstract

This research was a preliminary investigation into why young children give certain types of communications. Previous research had indicated that 5-year-olds are more likely to imitate the length rather than the quality of a speaker model's utterances. Experiment I replicated that finding. Experiment 2 explored whether this was due to young children confounding length with quality and therefore judging any long communication to be adequate. In both studies, 5-year-olds participated in a referential communication task. The stimuli were pictures of geometric shapes differing on color, pattern and size. The results for experiment 2 indicated that message length was not a factor in judging the adequacy of a communication. Discussion focused on other explanations for why young communicators imitate length rather than quality.

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