Young childrens verbal and nonverbal responses to mislabel teases

1
Young childrens verbal and nonverbal responses
to mislabel teases Debra L. Burnett, Linda M.
Milosky, Stefanie Hayes and Rachel
Neuman Department of Communication Sciences and
Disorders, Syracuse University
Poster 1107 Board 198
Results
Abstract Nonliteral language comprehension in
young children can be examined through playful
teasing between parents and children. Twenty-one
children, ages 16-35 months, and their mothers
were videotaped during play. Mother-initiated
mislabeling teases were identified and examined
for childrens correct and incorrect verbal and
nonverbal responses. Analyses reveal that
children did signal teasing comprehension of
mislabel teases either verbally (e.g., protesting
and/or correcting the mothers incorrect label)
or nonverbally (e.g., pointing to the correct
picture). Children demonstrated, by challenging
the mother, they knew the information was false
and often provided the correct information.

• Characterization of mislabel teases
• A total of 159 mislabel tease episodes were
  demonstrated by 21 mothers.
• Mothers averaged 7.57 mislabel tease episodes
  with a range of 1-19 episodes. Each episode
  ranged in length from 0.67 to 165.0 seconds.
• The children averaged 2.69 responses per tease
  episode with a range of 1-12.
• Of the sample, 55 of mislabels occurred while
  playing with objects and 40 occurred during
  bookreading.
• Of the 159 mislabel teases, 69.9 were initiated
  in the form of a question.

• Findings for entire corpus
• The corpus consists of 427 responses coded from
  159 tease episodes (see Figure 1 for
  proportions). Thus some tease episodes contained
  more than one response.
• Of the 159 tease episodes, 49.7 (n126) had at
  least one correct verbal response and 30.2
  (n48) had at least one incorrect verbal
  response.
• At least one nonverbal response, occurring in the
  absence of a verbal response, was used correctly
  6.9 (n11) and incorrectly 2.5 (n4) during the
  159 tease episodes.

Introduction

• Playful teasing is defined as exchanges in which
  the speaker intentionally provokes the target in
  a playful, nonthreatening way with the use of
  verbal and/or nonverbal off-record markers such
  as facial expression (Keltner, Capps, Kring,
  Young, Heerey, 2001).
• Playful teasing is a means by which young
  children can demonstrate the ability to resolve
  ambiguities in their social interactions. Miller
  (1986) stated that teasing may be used to show
  children how to play with language and how
  language is related to the world around them.
• The present study examines the nature of young
  childrens verbal and nonverbal responses, which
  may signal either tease comprehension or
  non-comprehension, as this has yet to be
  thoroughly explored in the literature.
• The present study used a seminaturalistic
  methodology to answer the following questions
• (1) What behaviors, verbal and nonverbal, do
  young children demonstrate in response to
  parent-initiated teases that indicate successful
  teasing comprehension?
• (2) Is successful teasing comprehension related
  to language abilities as assessed by the
  MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory?

• Nonverbal responses to mislabel teases
• Nonverbal responses were coded as correct if they
  indicated clear comprehension such as nodding the
  head yes or no or using gestures such as pointing
  to the mislabeled or correctly labeled picture.
  Less than a third of the children used a
  nonverbal response instead of a verbal response
  to being teased (see Figure 2). Only one child
  used nonverbal responses exclusively.
• Many of the children (n15) demonstrated a
  nonverbal response that was ambiguous or did not
  definitively indicate comprehension such as
  puzzled looks, reaching for the toy,
  smiling/laughing especially if mother was already
  smiling/laughing.
• In addition, 10/21 children had at least one
  tease where there was no response indicating that
  they were not attending to the tease.

• Verbal responses to mislabel teases
• The majority of children demonstrated at least
  one verbal response to being teased (see Figure
  2).
• 11 children demonstrated both correct and
  incorrect verbal responses while 4 children
  demonstrated only correct verbal responses and 4
  children demonstrated only incorrect verbal
  responses. Of these 8 children, 3 participated
  in only one mislabeling tease episode.

Methods

• A subset of 21 dyads, children ages 16 through
  35 months (M24), from urban and suburban areas
  of the greater Syracuse area was used for the
  current analyses since these mothers demonstrated
  mislabel teases. The dyads were part of a larger
  study examining playful teasing between mothers
  and young children (Burnett Milosky, 2005).
• Each mother-child dyad was seen for one two-hour
  session at home involving an examiner-generated
• interview regarding teasing practices (Heerey,
  Capps, Keltner, Kring, 2005) and 20-45 minutes
  of
• play in which the mother demonstrated typical
  playful teasing exchanges.
• The MacArthur Communication Development Inventory
  (Fenson, Dale, Reznick,Thal, Bates, Hartung,
• Pethick Reilly, 1993) and the Ages and
  Stages Questionnaires (Squires, Potter Bricker,
  1999)
• were completed.
• Sessions were videotaped and the middle 20
  minutes were analyzed for the presence of playful
  teases. Of the different types identified
  (interrater reliability was 80 for identifying
  tease types), object/attribute mislabel teases
  (e.g., calling a dog a kitty) were selected for
  the current analyses.
• Mislabel teases were coded for childrens
  responses to teases initiated by the mother as
  verbal/nonverbal, correct/incorrect,
  ambiguous/unambiguous with interrater reliability
  at 87.
• Of the 21 children, potential relationships were
  explored between performance on the MCDI and
  teasing comprehension for 20 children. One
  childs mother did not complete the MCDI.

Conclusions

• Teasing comprehension and language ability
• Potential relationships between language ability,
  as measured by the MCDI, and tease responses were
  explored for 20 participants using correlation
  analyses but no overall findings were
  significant.
• Of the 159 teases, mothers ended the tease with a
  sincere question (e.g., What does a pig say?
  after mislabeling the pig) 53.5 of the time
  perhaps to make sure children knew the correct
  label and the prior teasing intent before ending
  the episode.

• The majority of childrens responses to mislabel
  teases were verbal but nonverbal responses
  accounted for at least one of the responses for a
  third of the current sample. Further analysis of
  smiling and laughter as teasing responses will be
  of future interest.
• Approximately half of the responses were correct
  which could indicate that children are still
  acquiring the ability to recognize and/or respond
  correctly to mislabel teasing episodes during the
  early preschool years or given some mothers high
  frequency of mislabel teases within 20 minutes
  (e.g., 19), children may not have felt obligated
  to respond to each tease.
• While no relationship between the MCDI and tease
  responses was found during these preliminary
  findings, a measure of language comprehension
  should be employed since verbal and nonverbal
  responses tap comprehension ability.

Acknowledgements
References
Example of mislabel tease Mother says, Is that
Melvin? while coloring a picture of Scooby Doo
in a coloring book. Child responds, Scooby Doo.
Burnett, D. and Milosky, L. (2005).
Language-based playful teasing in mother-child
interactions. Poster presented at ASHA
Convention, San Diego, CA. Fenson, L., Dale,
P.S., Reznick, J.S., Thal, D., Bates, E.,
Hartung, J., Pethick, S., and Reilly, J. (1993)
MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories
Users Guide and Technical Manual. San Diego, CA
Singular Publishing Group. Heerey, E., Capps, L.,
Keltner, D. and Kring, A. (2005). Understanding
teases lessons from children with autism.
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 33,
55-68. Keltner, D., Capps, L., Kring, A., Young,
R., and Heerey, E. (2001). Just teasing a
conceptual analysis and empirical review.
Psychological Bulletin, 127, 2, 229-248. Miller,
P. (1986). Teasing as language socialization and
verbal play in a white working-class community.
In B.B. Schieffelin and E. Ochs (Eds.), Language
socialization across cultures (pp. 199-211).
Cambridge Cambridge University Press. Squires,
J., Potter, L., and Bricker, D. (1999). Ages and
Stages Questionnaires A Parent-Completed,
Child-Monitoring System, 2nd Edition. Baltimore,
MD Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
The research was supported in part by an ASHA
Special Interest Division 1 Language Learning
and Education Student Research Grant to the first
author. Special thanks to Nicole Yau, Rachel
Robertson, Renail Richards, Alexine Leon, Emily
DeSalvo, and Hannah Burke for their help with
data analysis Currently affiliated with Boston
University.
For further information contact Debra Burnett at
deburnet_at_syr.edu