A study of the patterns of communication in school-aged children

An initial study required mothers and their 6 year old children to describe patterns such as geometric shapes to one another. The finding of complex interactions between communicative activity and context was followed up in a second study requiring children (5-13 years) to describe abstract line drawings to their peers in a game similar to Krauss and Oluckaberg (1977). Performance was found to improve gradually across age and rapidly across the task with the younger children. The 'perceptual set' model designed to account for the latter finding received support in two further studies, one of which failed to support a role-taking hypothesis derived from Plavell (1965). The perceptual set modal views successful communication in young children u an emergent property of coordination established within the game context between the activities of the two participants, and is discussed in a Nittgenstinian framework to bring out its divergence from the 'cognitive developmental' approach. The latter is shown also to diverge from Piaget's theory in its treatment of the concepts of stage and structure, it is suggested that the primary functional unit of communication is 'activity in context' and that the hierarchical structure of this unit allows emergence at one level via organisation at a lower level.