Purpose: Conversational entrainment is the tendency for individuals to modify their behavior to more closely converge with the behavior of their communication partner and is an important aspect of successful interaction. Evidence of entrainment in adults is robust, yet research regarding its development in children is sparse. Here, we investigate…

Investigates how social expectations affect development of social functions of young children's speech, and concludes that children's expectations of appropriate verbal behavior are affected by differences in situations, age and sex. (MH)

Analysis of the conversations of 6 children (mean age 11 years) with semantic-pragmatic disorder found they were more likely to produce initiating utterances (rather than acknowledging or responding utterances) with both familiar and unfamiliar partners than other children of similar age or ability. Subjects did not produce more utterances or…

This study considers the interaction of syntactic and pragmatic factors (social and cognitive) in children's production of coordinate structures involving conjunction reduction. Two aspects of pragmatic context were considered: (1) the pattern of uncertainty or redundancy in a complex action sequence, and (2) the perceptual grouping of objects…