Children's Understanding of Whispering as a Cue for Privileged Information

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Children appear to have an early understanding that much information is conventional, i.e., information that anyone can know and anyone can share freely (Diesendruck & Markson, 2011). At some point however, children come to recognize that some information should not be shared. Behrend, Girgis, and Stevens (2018) found that 5-year-olds, but not younger children, are able to differentiate between this freely shareable conventional information and privileged information that has sharing restrictions. To better understand how children come to learn what is considered privileged information, the current study investigates whispering as a cue that children may use to identify information that should not be shared. Despite data collection limitations that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic, data was collected from 63 children. Participants were primarily four and five-year-old children and fewer six- to eight-year-olds for whom testing was interrupted (overall M =6 years, 1 month). Using video animations and prerecorded audio, participants were presented with scenes in which an action occurred on screen. Each of the two characters (Character A and Character B) would describe the same action with one speaking in a normal register and the other speaking in a whisper register. Next a third character entered the scene after all actions had occurred and the researcher then prompted participants to select which character, A or B, they believed would share what they had seen with the new character. It was hypothesized that if children recognize that whispering is a cue for privileged information and should not be freely shared, they will select normal register speakers over whisperers as more likely to share information. We also anticipated this ability would improve with age. Results indicated that there is a developmental trend in children’s ability to recognize whispering as a cue for privileged information. Participants were divided into older children (M = 7 years, 3 months) and younger children (M=4 years, 10 months). The mean number of normal speakers chosen was greater for older children (M= 2.14, SD = 1.36) than for younger children (M=1.91, SD =0.85) and age comparisons will be made once the remaining older children in the study are tested. Older children selected normal speakers as more likely to share more often than younger children at a rate that is approaching significance (r = .21, p=.08). Additionally, analysis of the participants’ responses about the reasons why people whisper provide evidence that children understand the privileged nature of whispering as 35 of the 71 participants stated they believed people whispered to communicate privileged information (secrets, surprises, etc.). The age distribution for the study currently consists of 19 four-year-old children, 20 five-year-old children, 11 six-year-old children, 11 seven-year-old children, and 10 eight-year old children. Based on the current results it appears that children can use whispering as a cue for privileged information. The preliminary results also suggest that this ability emerges around five or six years of age, which is consistent with previous research on when children can differentiate privileged from conventional information.

Authors

• Christina Barnes, University of Arkansas
  Presenting Author

• Douglas A Behrend, University of Arkansas
  Non-Presenting Author