Thesis

Discourse topic management and discussion skills of 4,6 and 9 year olds : developmental change, task and intervention effects

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 1996
Thesis identifier
  • T9115
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Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • The research consisted of three studies which examined the collaborative discourse topic management performances of 4-, 6- and 9-year-old dyads in a variety of different task situations. Studies one and two compared children’s performances across four different tasks. Topic management performances varied across the tasks and age groups. When the children were mutually reliant for task completion few differences existed between the different age groups. However, as mutual reliance decreased there was an increasing lack of joint attention, dialogic topic maintenance and co operation in the interactions of the 4- year-old dyads. Further, in a decision making task where mutual reliance was low, only the older children maintained topics by engaging in collaborative discussion involving the use of suggestions, justifications, counter arguments and agreements. In comparison, 4-year- olds produced short topic sequences consisting largely of self repetition. To determine whether the 4-year-olds were unable or just unwilling to engage in collaborative discussion, the final study compared children’s performances on an open- ended task either with or without the help of scaffolding to elicit this type of dialogue from the children. Results revealed that although older children gained from the scaffolding, they collaborated in some discussion in both conditions. Moreover, the intervention was successful at eliciting higher levels of justifications, suggestions and agreements from the 4-year-olds than were produced by their counterparts and even the 6 year olds in the control condition. However, despite also showing an ability to consider other’s views they did not engage in collaborative discussion but rather disputed. The overall implications are that in middle childhood changes in the ability to maintain topics occur at a local level. Further, whereas 4-year-olds do not have a full understanding of listener roles in dialogue, especially when mutual reliance is low, nor the full socio-cognitive skills required to participate in collaborative discussion, older children, increasingly with age, have these skills.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Howe, Christine
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DOI
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