Learning to Communicate from Models: Children Confuse Length with Information

Abstract

WHITEHURST, GROvER J.; SONNENSCHEIN, SUSAN; and IANFOLLA, B. J. Learning to Communicate from Models: Children Confuse Length with Information. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 507-513. Young children tend to become more redundant and informative speakers after listening to nonredundant and informative speakers. This research investigated whether this is due to the child minimizing effort by producing easier redundant messages, or whether it is due to the child's equation of longer messages with better messages through failure to discriminate the informativeness of messages. 6 modeling conditions involved orthogonal manipulations of the length and informativeness of the messages to which children responded as listeners. Later in the speaker's role, children who had heard long messages improved their communication accuracy (compared to a no-model control), while children who had heard short messages showed no change. No effect of message quality was observed: A model using uninformative long messages caused the child to improve as much as a model using informative long messages. 5-yearolds are sensitive to the length but not to the informativeness of the messages they hear.