This paper reviews the literature concerning differences in the linguistic style of girls/boys in everyday interactions, and presents empirical data from a study with Greek school children. Two age groups were studied, 6.5 years (N=100) and 9.5 years (N=100), respectively. Everyday life situations were presented, asking children to express what…

This is an article in a series illustrating the way scholars in communication have pursued translating their research into practice. The translational nature of communication accommodation theory and examples of its application are the focus of this contribution.

Finds no support for cohort-centrism from a communication perspective, but finds that older persons viewed their conversational partners, whether young or old, to be more competent than did younger persons, and were more satisfied conversing with young persons. Finds that younger persons were less satisfied, regardless of the age of the…

Children (ages 5-8) were presented with a communication task under four different experimental conditions, to find contexts which would encourage their use of the indefinite article. Even older children failed to identify their referents consistently, although nearly all subjects used indefinite expressions intermittently when mentioning new…

Investigates the evolution of specific lexical and syntactical clues and the recurrence of various semantic fields in mothers' spontaneous speech to their infants. Content of mothers' speech was related to age in newborn to 10-month-old children. (Author/RH)

Explores beliefs about the vocal style that 40 young, 40 middle-aged, and 40 older adults would use in addressing two older targets--one fitting a negative and one a positive stereotype. Reveals a greater tendency to use patronizing talk with the negative than with the positive. Finds the context and age of the communicator also affected messages.…

Combines theoretical insights of communication accommodation theory and the communicative predicament model (CPM) of aging with methodological procedures of interethnic communication. Finds that older communicators in dissatisfying conversations were characterized as being underaccommodative and negatively expressive. Interprets data theoretically…

Indicates that younger married couples were both more communicative and satisfied than younger cohabiting couples or older married or cohabiting couples. Suggests that verbal and sexual communication practices of intimates are influenced more by their chronological age than by whether they are married or cohabiting. (JD)

Determined if young children can evaluate the adequacy of communications and situations that specify or omit deictic information critical to the listener's performance. Results showed that all subjects discriminated among deictically adequate and inadequate communications, but that 6-year-olds made fewer correct judgments than did 9-year-olds and…

Four experiments investigated six-year-olds' understanding of the say-mean distinction in referential speech. Concludes that young children are ineffective at using others' informational states in deciding whether a literal or nonliteral message interpretation is appropriate. (RH)

Assessed older (N=33) and middle-aged (N=18) women on linguistic discourse tasks. Subjects were interviewed, administered cognitive tests, and given narrative and procedural discourse tasks. Older subjects generally performed more poorly than did middle-aged subjects. Within the older group, measures of quality of disclosure were generally…

Reports a study comparing the nonverbal decoding ability (under auditory, visual, and audio-visual conditions) of college age females with elderly females, in order to identify preliminary nonverbal differences which may be related to aging. Finds that the elderly were significantly less skilled in decoding nonverbal behaviors across all…

Finds that self-reported loneliness was not related to depression or social anxiety for either young or older adults, and was not related to young or older adults' social skill as measured by partner attention. Indicates that social anxiety, however, was related to social skill during intergenerational conversations. (SR)

Kindergartners and second graders evaluated the communicative clarity of brief oral instructions under three conditions: unambiguous, no closure, and closure. Results suggest that the growth of children's knowledge about communication includes the developing awareness that an ambiguous message is intrinsically unclear and remains a poor message…

Considers age and sex differences on aggressive and responsive communication traits. States that participants reported their verbal aggressiveness, argumentativeness, communication apprehension, cognitive flexibility, and other characteristics. Finds significant interactions for argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness. Concludes that studying…