Development of Flexible Role-Taking in Conversations Across Preschool

Abstract

The paper investigates the development of conversational skills in preschool children, focusing on their ability to adopt flexible roles in dialogues. We specifically analyze children's coordinated behavior in question-response-follow-up sequences, both as Initiators and Responders, using a longitudinal French corpus of child-caregiver spontaneous interactions. While preschool children showed growing sophistication in their ability to initiate and respond appropriately within conversations, they still had qualitative differences with adults, especially as initiators, suggesting further development beyond preschool. The findings contribute to our understanding of how conversational skills develop in early childhood and the role these skills play in broader cognitive and social development.