Conversations between ages five and seven – Connections to executive functions and implicature comprehension

Abstract

A language user must rely on several different abilities to carry out a conversation, e.g., the ability to acknowledge the conversational contributions of others, to respond appropriately, to stay on topic, etc. There are many aspects of the development of conversational conduct that are yet unknown. In this study, the longitudinal development of conversational conduct, as in acknowledging one's interlocutor's previous turn, was traced from age 5;0 to 7;2. We also investigated whether conversational conduct was predicted by core language skill, executive functions, and specific pragmatic abilities. Previous findings of productive morphosyntactic accuracy were replicated, while findings concerning longitudinal receptive vocabulary were not. We also found connections between children's conversational responses and executive functions, working memory, and the comprehension of conversational implicatures. The results suggest that conversational conduct is dependent on inferring communicative intentions, as well as being able to keep track of others' contributions and how they relate to previous turns.