Private and social speech in children's dyadic communication in a naturalistic context

Abstract

Few analyses of subcategories of private and social speech in a dyadic situation involving children in a naturalistic context have been reported to date. As a result, the analysis of children's social speech has frequently been ignored. Observational studies of private speech have focused mainly on the age range between 4 and 8 years, and the distinction
between category dimensions (function, form and/or content) has very often been ignored. Another deficit in fhis type of work is the neglect of silence as a category. In the present study, a category system that focuses on forn and content dimensions, including silence and social speech categories,
was applied to the communication of 64 3rd and 5th grade children paired in dyads while playing with a Lego-set. The main results revealed that, between the uges of 8 and 10: (a) the internalization of private speech (inaudible to the partner, due to the very low tone of the voice) increased significantly; (b) the frequency of task-relevant social speech also increased significantly; and (c) the frequency of task-irrelevant social speech decreased significantly. As expected, the frequency of silences did not vary significantly ut these uges.