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Broadening the units of analysis in communication: speech and nonverbal behaviours in pragmatic comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2001

SPENCER D. KELLY
SPENCER D. KELLY
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Abstract

Recently, much research has explored the role that nonverbal pointing behaviours play in children's early acquisition of language, for example during word learning. However, few researchers have considered the possibility that these behaviours may continue to play a role in language comprehension as children develop more sophisticated language skills. The present study investigates the role that eye gaze and pointing gestures play in three- to five-year-olds understanding of complex pragmatic communication. Experiment 1 demonstrates that children (N = 29) better understand videotapes of a mother making indirect requests to a child when the requests are accompanied by nonverbal pointing behaviours. Experiment 2 uses a different methodology in which children (N = 27) are actual participants rather than observers in order to generalize the findings to naturalistic, face-to-face interactions. The results from both experiments suggest that broader units of analysis beyond the verbal message may be needed in studying children's continuing understanding of pragmatic processes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 2001 , pp. 325 - 349
Copyright
2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This research was supported by the William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship granted to the author from the University of Chicago. I thank Kelly Craig and Susan Geishardt for helping me collect and code the data and Bartlet D. Moore IV for providing inter-rater reliability. I thank several faculty who helped me at various stages of this project: Philip Garber, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Tom Trabasso, David McNeill, R. Breckinridge Church, and Boaz Keyser. I give special thanks to my colleague, Dale Barr, who greatly helped me develop the ideas behind this study. Finally, I thank all the principals, teachers, and students for their participation at the schools where I collected data.