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Children's comprehension of intonation as a marker for discourse topic collaboration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Gary Holdgrafer  and
Thomas F. Campbell
Gary Holdgrafer*
Affiliation:
The University of Alberta
Thomas F. Campbell
Affiliation:
Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta
*
Gary Holdgrafer, Ph.D., Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, 11044 Garneau Professional Building, The University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, CanadaT6G OT2
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Abstract

Two prerecorded productions of the “What's this?” question were presented to Grade 2, 4, and 6 children and to adults over a series of trials in a referential communication task. One production contained emphatic stress on the word “this” and the other production contained equal stress on both words. For each question presentation the experimenter selected a colored picture of an object from a deck that was the match to one of two picture choices in view of the subjects. The students guessed on successive presentations whether a different picture (new topic collaboration) or the same picture (old topic collaboration) had been selected based on the presence or absence of emphatic stress in the questions. No feedback was given to the students throughout the experimental procedure. Use of intonation as a marker for topic collaboration appeared by Grade 4, which is in support of other similar research.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 373 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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