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Communicative strategies in parent-child task-oriented dialogues

Research Questions

What are the discoursive strategies that parents use when instructing their child?
What is the nature of the information conveyed by maternal gestures in a task-oriented dialogue? Does it function as an attentional cue or can social and linguistic information be expressed via nonverbal behavior?
Are there differences in the communicative behavior between mothers and fathers?

Methods

In this project, we observed German mothers and fathers who instructed their children aged 1;10 to 2;2 to put two objects together according to a spatial relationship. The requested spatial relationships were systematically varied for task difficulty by using canonical object relations for simple tasks (e.g. put a girl on a chair), and noncanonical object relations which contradict children’s object knowledge for more difficult ones (e.g. put a rabbit on a barn). For the gestural behavior, we analyzed deictic (pointing), iconic and manipulative gestures with respect to task difficulty and to the semantic correspondence between verbal and nonverbal parental behavior. Further, we analyzed verbal discoursive strategies the mothers used in the different tasks. Future analyses will look at fathers’ verbal and non-verbal input in these tasks and will focus on the question whether there are qualitative or quantitative differences to the maternal verbal and nonverbal input, and if there are, how these can be described.

Outcomes

So far, the data reveal that nonverbal behavior depended not only on the linguistic capabilities of the interlocutor but also on the canonicality of a spatial relationship. In noncanonical tasks, mothers used more pointing gestures than in canonical tasks. These pointing gestures rather reinforced the verbal message, especially when the children had smaller vocabulary sizes. We also found that mothers adapted their gestural behavior to a greater extent towards children whose lexical development was delayed (late talkers). They used more pointing gestures than the mothers of the typically developing children, particularly in noncanonical tasks.
The canonicality of a spatial relationship also influenced the discoursive strategies of the mothers. In canonical tasks, mothers made greater use of so-called bring-in strategies, i.e. telling a story about past events, and thus, building on the child’s knowledge. Noncanonical tasks contradict the child’s object knowledge, therefore, the mothers had to use another strategy. In these noncanonical tasks, they used so-called follow-in strategies, i.e. they followed the current attentional focus of the child, by e.g. describing the child’s actions, or redirecting the child’s attention by contrasting the child’s action to the requested action.

Publications from this project: (Journals, Poster, talks)

Rohlfing, K. J. (2011). Exploring„ Associative Talk“: When German Mothers Instruct Their Two-year-olds For Spatial Tasks. Dialogue & Discourse, 2, 1-18.

Rohlfing, K. J. & Grimminger, A. (2011): Do lexical skills and task influence maternal gestural input. Paper presented at the XII. International Congress for Studies in Child Language, Montreal, Canada, 19. – 23. July.

Grimminger, A., Rohlfing, K. J., & Stenneken, P. (2010). Childrens lexical skills and task demands affect gestural behavior in mothers of late-talking children and children with typical language development. Gesture, 10, 251-278.

Rohlfing, K. J., Grimminger, A. & Salas Poblete, J. (2010): When pointing is used to express iconic meaning. Paper presented at the 4th International Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies, Frankfurt (Oder), 26. – 30. July.

Grimminger, A., Rohlfing, K. J., Salas Poblete, J. & Stenneken, P. (2009): Do mothers alter their pointing behaviour in dependence of children‘s lexical development? Analysis of task- oriented gestural input towards typical children and Late Talkers. Poster presented at the Multimodality of communication in children: gestures, emotions, language and cognition (MULTIMOD), Toulouse, France, 9. – 11. July.

Rohlfing, K. J., Salas Poblete, J. & Grimminger, A. (2009): Getting you to understand. How mothers gesture when instructing to put two objects together. Poster presented at the Meeting of the Society of Research in Child Development, Denver USA, 2. – 4. April.