Social and psychological factors related to variability of answering behaviour in five-year-old children.

Abstract

Speech samples were obtained from five-year-old children differing in social class, verbal intelligence test scores, sex and an index of mother-child interaction. As a subsidiary analysis inter-group comparisons were made of variations in the linguistic structure and word preferences in answers to three questions. Middle class children, especially those with high intelligence test scores, used more abstract structures and words, less self-referential speech, more precise words, and were more likely to summarize in their answers. These differences are consistent with Bernstein's specification of the nature and sociological location of an' elaborated' code.