AN INVESTIGATION OF THE NUMBER AND DURATION OF SPEAKING TURNS IN THREE SCHOOL AGE GROUPS OF CHILDREN IN TWO DYADIC CONDITIONS

The present study attempted to determine whether or not there are differences in the number and duration of speaking turns utilized by preschool, kindergarten, and early school age children in child-child dyads and mother-child dyads. Three hypotheses were developed to answer questions about the difference in the number and duration of speaking turns for (1) the school age groups, (2) the type of dyad, and (3) the interaction of school age and type of dyad.; From a total pool of one hundred and four children, six males and six females were randomly selected for each of the school age groups, and then randomly assigned to either a child-child dyad or a mother-child dyad. Each of the children was a Caucasian, native Standard American-English speaker, whose chronological age and language age represented the school age level from which they were selected.; The data were collected from videorecorded conversations that occurred over a five-minute period between each dyad. In the experimental procedure, each dyad was brought into the examination room by a research assistant and instructed to go into the room, look at a caged laboratory rabbit, and talk to each other.; The data were then scored for the number and duration of speaking turns that were employed by the children. The number of speaking turns was obtained from the total number of solitary talking and interruptive simultaneous speaking patterns utilized by each child. The duration of speaking turns was determined by the amount of time that elapsed, in seconds and tenths of seconds, for each speaking turn, and converted into proportions of minutes by dividing the total timed values for each child by sixty seconds.; The data were analyzed by a multivariate analysis of variance computer program which yielded significant F ratios for each of the three hypotheses. Upon completing the a priori analyses, three post hoc analyses were conducted on the data in order to locate the sources of significance. Finally, a descriptive analysis was performed on the occurrence of solitary talking and interruptive simultaneous speaking patterns used by the children in the three school age groups.; Five conclusions were drawn from the findings of the present study. First, there are differences in the number and duration of speaking turns utilized by preschool, kindergarten, and early school age children in child-child dyads, but not in mother-child dyads. Second, the abundance of non-conversational activities found in preschool peer interactions greatly reduces the number of turns children take and the amount of time that elapses during these turns. Third, more turns are taken and held by preschool children in mother-child dyads than in child-child dyads. Similarly, kindergarten children take more turns in mother-child dyads than in child-child dyads. Fourth, regardless of age differences, children predominantly use pauses to separate the exchange of turns, rather than overlapping their turns. Finally, while non-conversational activities tend to constrain the turn-taking of peers, especially in preschool peer interactions, the linguistic and communicative strategies of mothers appear to influence the number of turns children take and the amount of time that elapses during these turns.