Influence and involvement in children's discourse: age, gender, and partner effects.
Children's discourse with peers was examined in relation to speaker gender, partner gender, and age level. 138 children were matched with either a same- or an other-gender peer at the early childhood and middle childhood age levels (median ages = 5 and 7 years) and asked to play with puppets for 10 min. Speech acts were coded as either collaborative (affiliative involvement and direct influence), controlling (distancing involvement and direct influence), obliging (affiliative involvement and nondirect influence), or withdrawing (distancing involvement and nondirect influence). Girls' and boys' communication patterns were more similar than different. However, gender-related differences with medium to large effect sizes were found. Gender-typed communications were more likely at the middle childhood than the early childhood age level and in same-gender than mixed-gender dyads. The findings are interpreted in terms of developmental and contextual accounts of gender and social behavior. Recommendations for future research are offered.
Leaper
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Program in Developmental Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz 95064.
D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010379:Peer Group; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012737:Sex Factors; D012919:Social Behavior; D012930:Social Dominance; D014705:Verbal Behavior