The development of children’s ability to track and predict turn structure in conversation

Abstract

a b s t r a c tChildren begin developing turn-taking skills in infancy but take several years to fluidly integrate their growing knowledge of language into their turn-taking behavior. In two eye-tracking experiments, we measured children's anticipatory gaze to upcoming responders while controlling linguistic cues to turn structure. In Experiment 1, we showed English and non-English conversations to English-speaking adults and children. In Experiment 2, we phonetically controlled lexicosyntactic and prosodic cues in English-only speech. Children spontaneously made anticipatory gaze switches by age two and continued improving through age six. In both experiments, children and adults made more anticipatory switches after hearing questions. Consistent with prior findings on adult turn prediction, prosodic information alone did not increase children's anticipatory gaze shifts. But, unlike prior work with adults, lexical information alone was not sufficient either-children's performance was best overall with lexicosyntax and prosody together. Our findings support an account in which turn tracking and turn prediction emerge in infancy and then gradually become integrated with children's online linguistic processing.

Temporal Responsiveness in Mother–Child Dialogue: A Longitudinal Analysis of Children with Normal Hearing and Hearing Loss

“…However, one might also predict a change such that parents match their younger infants and respond more slowly initially (than they would to an adult), and decrease their latency with age. For example, recent work has shown that young children’s ability to predict the turn-taking structure of interaction continues to develop through the preschool years (Casillas & Frank, 2017). …”

“…A large number of repeated measures on communicative timing in free conversation were collected both within and across multiple ages. A number of studies have examined the temporal properties of mother-child interaction using a longitudinal design, though these studies have either focused on the infancy period (Gratier et al, 2015; Harder, Lange, Hansen, Væver, & Køppe, 2015; Hilbrink et al, 2015) or preschool period (Casillas & Frank, 2017). In contrast, present study tracks infants over several years, which allows us to examine long-term developmental changes within individual mother-child dyads.…”

“…It was expected that we would observe such changes as children improve their communicative abilities (Casillas & Frank, 2017; Kail, 1991; Keitel, Prinz, Friederici, Hofsten, & Daum, 2013), but the developmental period has not been fully identified.…”

Communicative Characteristics Of Prognostic Competence In Primary Schoolchildren With Dysontogenesis Deficiency

“…The carried out theoretical and qualitative-quantitative analysis of the results obtained in the course of this study suggests that speech impairment negatively affects the formation of forecasting, which in the future may lead to the formation of deviant behavior in this category of children, as evidenced by the works of Abitov et al (2016) Casillas & Frank (2017, Dupere et al (2015), Fuentes et al (2015), Mills et al (2014), Minullina (2014), Nigmatullina & Artemyeva (2015). However, this problem is rather outlined in psychological and pedagogical studies than analyzed, which proves the need for further empirical study of the forecasting specifics in younger schoolchildren, with account to peculiarities of communication of younger schoolchildren in normogenesis and dysontogenesis.…”

Do Questions Get Infants Talking? Infant Vocal Responses to Questions and Declaratives in Maternal Speech

“…One recent study found a U-shaped curve in the development of infants' response latencies, with faster responding at 5 and 18 months compared with 9 and 12 months (Hilbrink, Gattis, & Levinson, 2015). Children's ability to track others' turn-taking also develops from age 1 to 3 years (Casillas & Frank, 2015;Keitel, Prinz, Friederici, von Hofsten, & Daum, 2013;Von Hofsten, Uhlig, Adell, & Kochukhova, 2009). Appropriate responsiveness to caregiver speech is a key component of the development of conversational interaction.…”