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Child responsiveness to mother questions of varying type and presentation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Lynda Olsen-Fulero  and
Jill Conforti
Lynda Olsen-Fulero
Affiliation:
Antioch College
Jill Conforti
Affiliation:
Antioch College
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Abstract

Although questions vary considerably with respect to the responses appropriate to them and the motivations intrinsic to them, little attention has yet been given to the potential effects of these factors on the power of questions to perform turn-allocating and response-eliciting functions. The present study attempts to clarify how such variables as motivation, constraint, difficulty and function may affect the child's responsiveness to mother questions. Results suggest that functionally defined question types are differentiable not only by their relative power to elicit a response from the child, but also by the manner in which they are presented. Implications of these results in the context of mother–child conversation and its effects are considered.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , October 1983 , pp. 495 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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