Young Children's Attention to Dyadic Conversation as Modified by Grade, Sex, Sociometric Status, and Conversational Partner

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Genetic, Social and General Psychology Monographs

Volume

111

Issue

2

Publisher

Heldref Publications

Publication Date

1985

First Page

151

Last Page

165

Abstract

Forty-eight American children, 12 popular and 12 rejected children from Grades 3 and 6, were paired with same-sex friends and nonfriends on an interactive task. Children were videotaped and their interactions judged for the amount and type of attention each child in the dyad gave to each other and the conversation. Main dependent measures included mutual engagements, acknowledgement of the partner, getting the attention of the partner, attention to the conversation, and social impact of the utterances. Both rejected and popular children attended to the conversation and the partner, but rejected children appeared to overattend in several ways. The interactions of rejected children and their matches involved more mutual engagements, conversational initiators, facilitators, terminators, and nonverbal attention-getting devices. Sex and developmental effects were also found.

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