Dialogues among Children and between Children and Their Mothers

MARTINEZ, MARCO ANTONIo. Dialogues among Children and between Children and Their Mothers. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1987, 58, 1035-1043. Children's conversational stgyles in dialogues with mothers and with peers were compared. Videotaped conversations of 20 Spanish-speaking children aged 2 or 4 years, first with their mothers and then with each other, provided the data to explore a hypothesis regarding the regulatory functions of speech. In conversation with their mothers, children of both ages were asymmetrically regulated by the mother, mainly through maternal use of turnabouts (conversation devices that clearly extend dialogue by securing a response from the child). In conversation with peers, they regulated each other symmetrically by employing strategies previously used by their mothers. Results support Vygotsky's hypothesis that children's skills in following regulation by others and in regulating of others emerge within the social context of conversations.