Poster #233 - The Influence of Context and Partner on Children’s Communicative Responses

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

As children age, they become more discriminating about with whom they will share resources. Previous work suggests that context influences children’s sharing behaviour. For example, children begin to develop an understanding of context, such as the difference between working cooperatively and competitively, around the age of 3 years (Schmidt, Hardecker, & Tomasello, 2016). By preschool, children become more likely to share items required to complete a task when working collaboratively, as opposed to competitively, with a (fictional) peer (Nilsen & Valcke, 2018). Aside from context, a social partner’s behaviour can also affect how children choose to distribute items. Martin and Olson (2015), for instance, found that children elect to share more resources with another person when that person has exhibited prosocial behaviour in the past, even if the behaviour was not directed towards them. Yet, a partner’s sharing behaviour is only one aspect of an interaction; their communicative behaviour is also an important consideration. Moreover, how such communicative behaviour impacts the utterances made by children is unclear. The present work addressed these gaps, examining how contextual factors (e.g., cooperative game versus competitive game) and a social partner’s verbal overtures influenced how children conversed with their peers.

These research questions were addressed within the framework of a resource allocation task (i.e., deciding who would receive items important to winning a game). In addition to exploring how children shared, the present work examined children’s communicative responses to their partners given the social context and communicative cues. Against the backdrop of either a competitive or cooperative context, children (aged 4-6 years; N=118) heard audio messages from (fictional) partners, which conveyed their partners’ willingness to collaborate. The messages were either congruent with the context (e.g., team-oriented message and cooperative context, self-oriented message and competitive context), or incongruent (e.g., self-oriented message and cooperative context). Participants were asked to provide verbal messages to their social partners, which were recorded and analysed. Responses were coded and broadly categorized into prosocial replies (i.e., friendly, collaborative) and competitive replies (i.e., self-promoting, antagonistic).

While children’s sharing behaviour generally did not show sensitivity to messages from partners, verbal responses showed sensitivity to both context and message type. Across age groups, children generated messages that “matched” those of their partners. Cooperative contexts and team-oriented messages incited significantly more collaborative responses compared to competitive contexts and self-oriented messages. These types of responses communicate greater willingness to work in partnership, which is critical to the success of both parties within a cooperative context. Conversely, competitive contexts and self-oriented messages provoked significantly more self-promoting and antagonistic comments from participants. Given that competition entails working alone to achieve a goal, fostering a relationship with an opponent is not necessary for success. Therefore, children might have been more inclined to assert themselves within a competitive context or following a self-focused message from their partners. Moreover, there was an interaction such that the combination of competitive context and self-oriented messages was particularly detrimental to the social interaction (i.e., children generated fewer prosocial replies and more competitive replies).

Authors

• Alanna Valcke, University of Waterloo
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Nilsen, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author