Abstract
The present research combines developmental and socioeconomic (SES) perspectives in a study of paralinguistic aspects of children’s speech. Spontaneous speech samples were obtained from 94 kindergarten and second-grade children of low-, middle-, and high-SES families in response to a nine-frame sequence of cartoon cards. Results show that low-SES kindergarten children use much longer, although fewer, unfilled pauses than do middle- or high-SES children. However, by second grade there are no longer significant SES differences, a phenomena which is mainly the result of the low-SES children readjusting their use of pause time.
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Bassett, M.R., O’connell, D.C. & Monahan, W.J. Pausological aspects of children’s narratives. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 9, 166–168 (1977). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336962
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336962