GOALS, PLANS, MEANS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS

CONSTANCE ROJKO SCHMIDT, Purdue University

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to provide a new framework for interpreting the development of communicative skills and to demonstrate how this framework can be used in investigating children's communicative skills. Piaget's (1926) construct of egocentric speech was divided into 11 separate components in order to identify specific constraints on children's communication. The 11 components then served as an organizational framework for reviewing recent literature concerning the development of communicative skills. At the end of this review, it was concluded that children overcome many of the component limitations of egocentric speech before age five. It was also concluded that egocentric speech, even when it is divided into separate components, cannot deal adequately with the discrepancy between the communicative skills children have available and the manner in which they employ these skills. Following the review of the literature, an alternate model of communicative development was proposed. In this model, the choices children must make in any given communicative setting were described. These choices involved the child's goal in the setting, the plan the child adopts for achieving this goal, and the means by which that plan is implemented. The major assumption underlying the model was that the goals children pursue influence their plans and the means by which those plans are implemented. In addition, it was proposed that there would be a developmental increase in the magnitude of the influence of goals on plans and means. Following the description of the goals/plans/means model, a communicative study based on the model was presented. In the study, six and nine year olds were placed in two communicative situations. In one situation, the child's goal was to teach a peer how to play a board game. In the second situation, the goal was to maintain a conversation with a peer. Dyadic interactions of same-age, same-sex pairs of children were video-taped for six minutes in each communicative situation. The degree to which children adopted three communicative plans was measured in each situation. The proposed plans included: "be relevant to the conversation," "maintain attention with the listener," and "alternate turns with the listener." Each plan could be implemented through a variety of communicative means. Following the video-taped sessions, the children were interviewed concerning their plans for accomplishing the assigned goals. The results of the study indicated that at both age levels children's communicative goals influenced their plans and the means by which those plans were implemented. Children adopted the plans to "be relevant" and "maintain attention" in both situations, but the means by which these plans were implemented varied across ages and tasks. Nine year olds were much more likely to "alternate turns" while maintaining a conversation than when explaining a game to a peer, while the difference between tasks for the "alternate turns" plan was less pronounced for the six year olds. There were also differences between the tasks in the plans children articulated when asked how they accomplished their communicative goals. The current research illustrated the utility of the goals/plans/means framework. The fact that children's communicative behavior depends on the communicative setting cannot be explained in terms of a gradual waning of the components of egocentric speech but can be interpreted within the goals/plans/means framework. Communicative behaviors will depend on children's goals and the means they coordinate with these goals. In the framework, the processes by which children select communicative skills, order them, and use them in the service of social goals are considered.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Developmental psychology

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