Estudio longitudinal de la comunicación referencial en niños de 4 a 8 años

Resum

This paper analyzes communicative behaviour in a longitudinal study with ten pairs of children, evaluated for the first time at age 4;6 and reevaluated at age 6;6 and 8;7. The procedure used follows the lines of referential-ecological research which incorporates an appraisal of the guidance offered by the adult examiner. The results refect the structural characteristics of communication, the communicative strategies produced by the three interlocutors and the sequential interaction patterns. They show the persistence of certain structures, an increase in the number of strategies used, and an increase in the complexity of communicative patterns with age. These results confirm the hypothesis of increasing communicative competence with age while simultaneously confirming the fall in the adult's guiding function, thus implying greater awareness of the processes involved in language emission-comprehension. The relationship between awareness, regulation and metacognitive processes should be explored further in future studies.