Poster #52 - Chinese Children’s Questions, Caregivers’ Responses, and Children’s Follow-up: Corpus Analysis and Cross-cultural Comparison

• In Event: Poster Session 10

Abstract

Despite the long-standing interest in children’s questions (Chouinard, 2007; Piaget, 1926), most research on this topic has been conducted in Western societies where questions from children are encouraged, and children are likely to be considered equal conversational partners with adults. In some non-Western cultures, however, children are socialized to be deferential when speaking with adults, because the local norms prioritize maintaining the interpersonal hierarchy (Gauvain & Munroe, 2019; Li, 2012). These varied patterns of socialization might have critical implications for children’s cognitive and language development.

To enrich our understanding of whether and how children’s questions vary in different sociocultural contexts, we investigated Chinese children’s questions, caregivers’ responses, and children’s follow-up replies in naturalistic caregiver-child conversations across the early childhood period. The data come from three Mandarin-speaking preschool children. Their conversations at home with their caregivers were recorded longitudinally, transcribed, and uploaded to CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000). To examine age-related changes, the transcripts were divided into three periods: Period 1—1;7 to 2;3 years; Period 2—2;4 to 3;0 years; Period 3—3;1 to 3;9 years. Children’s questions were extracted, together with the 3 utterances immediately before and after each question. Questions were then coded for type (information-seeking vs. non-information-seeking), subtype (fact-seeking vs. explanation-seeking), and content (e.g., labels, locations, etc.). Caregivers’ responses were coded for adequacy (adequate, inadequate, and other talk moves). Children’s follow-up reactions were coded for response type (e.g., asking a follow-up question, no reply, etc.).

The dataset comprises 1768 questions over 43 hours of conversation, which averages to 41 questions asked per hour by the Chinese children, a much lower rate than their American counterparts (107 questions per hour) (Chouinard, 2007). However, like American children (Chouinard, 2007), Chinese children asked more information-seeking questions than non-information-seeking questions (see Figure 1, left-hand panel), and asked more fact-seeking questions than explanation-seeking questions (see Figure 1, right-hand panel).

In addition, a content analysis confirmed that the Chinese children often asked about the same topics as US children, Thus, questions about labels, activities, states, and locations were frequent. Intriguingly, however, and unlike US children, Chinese children often asked about norms with the rate of norm questions increasing sharply from Period 1 to Period 2.

The pattern of responding by Chinese caregivers was consistent with US findings (Kurkul & Corriveau, 2018). Thus, the quality and type of response by caregivers remained relatively constant across time, with most responses categorized as adequate. Cultural similarities were also observed in children’s replies to caregiver responses. Like American children (Kurkul & Corriveau, 2018), Chinese children tend to respond more actively after inadequate responses than adequate responses (see Figure 2).

In sum, this study demonstrates that the general, functional aspects of children’s questions, caregiver responses, and children’s follow-up replies are similar for Chinese and American children. However, notable cultural differences were detected in the rate of questioning by children, and the specific content being asked about, suggesting potential culturally specific pathways of language socialization and cognitive development.

Authors

• Zhongyu Wei, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Agnes Yu Ye

• Paul Harris, Harvard University