David Pagmar, PhD student. Private photo

Title of thesis

The Development of Conversational Contingency: and Selected Pragmatic Abilities

Opponent

Ute Bohnacker, Professor of Linguistics, Uppsala University

Supervisors

Tove Nilsson Gerholm, docent
Östen Dahl, professor
Julia Uddén, PhD

Open Access in DiVA

To the thesis in DiVA (The Digital Academic Archive)

Cover image: Portrait of a Child (ca. 1835), Camille Corot

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to examine children’s development as language users, with a focus on their development as conversationalists. Conversational development was measured through conversational contingency, i.e. how conversational turns are connected to each other, either in topic or time. The thesis introduces a conversational contingency hierarchy, including basic conversational contingency (turns that in any way acknowledges the topic of the previous turn), which constitutes the main outcomes measure in the conducted studies. The thesis consists of four papers. Paper I-III were conducted with Swedish speaking children from the longitudinal MINT project (n=40; n=50; n=63). The first paper investigated which factors, internal and external to the child, that best predicted conversational contingency of children age five. The studies included linguistic and cognitive measures, environmental factors, as well as social and cognitive measures in early development. Results showed that receptive vocabulary (but not morphosyntactic accuracy) was related to positive conversational measures, as was later preschool entry. A suggested explanation is that a child needs to reach a specific level of lexical knowledge to start to understand conversational conventions. Paper II investigated the development of conversational behaviour at age seven. Conversational measures were analysed with measures of core language, executive functions (EF), and specific pragmatic abilities. Results showed that the conversational measures at age seven were no longer predicted by receptive vocabulary. Instead there were correlations to working memory, cognitive flexibility, and comprehension of conversational implicatures. A key finding was that measures of basic conversational contingency increased substantially from age five to seven. The results indicate that certain abilities affect conversational development during certain stages of development. Paper II also shows that basic conversational contingency develops gradually towards the adult conversational norm. Paper III examined the size, velocity, and acceleration of the parental reported productive vocabulary and if these measures predicted later core language and language use/pragmatic skill. Parental reports of productive vocabulary informed later language ability (receptive vocabulary and morphosyntactic accuracy), but not to the same extent as in previous research. The results indicate that the early lexicon does not inform later language use. Paper IV investigated older children, ages 11–12, 15–16, and the development of audience design (AD). We measured the ability to tailor referential expressions in accordance with the inferred world knowledge of an addressee. Measures of EF were also obtained. Results showed that AD develops during adolescence, and provided indications for a separation of world knowledge-based AD from EF. Additionally, the study shows that aspects of pragmatic competence are still under development well into adolescence.  In sum, the thesis concludes that the relationship between conversational development and other developmental factors is dynamic and multifaceted. The ability to acknowledge the turns of others develops in tandem with several other abilities. Specific phases during conversational development connect to core language, executive functions, and comprehension of implicatures.