Children's Selective Listening to Stories: Familiarity Effects Involving Vocabulary, Syntax and Intonation
- 1 August 1973
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Psychological Reports
- Vol. 33 (1) , 255-266
- https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1973.33.1.255
Abstract
Grade-school children's selective listening preferences for natural and altered narratives were investigated. The listening material involved variations in the linguistic familiarity of the following: vocabulary-syntax-intonation (English versus German), syntax (natural versus random word order), and intonation (natural versus flat). Each child listened freely to pairs of stories; response frequency and duration were automatically recorded. Findings were: (a) patterns of listening preference changed with age (older children showed increasing preference for familiar versions); (b) preference for familiar syntax patterns arose at a later age than preference for other dimensions; (c) ability to verbalize differences between natural and altered versions paralleled selective listening skills. Discussion of results is in terms of current psycholinguistic theory and the potential utility of the selective listening methodology.Keywords
This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Role of Syntax in Children's Comprehension from Ages Six to TwelveMonographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1970
- BILINGUALISM AND THE SPANISH-SPEAKING CHILDPublished by Elsevier ,1970
- The effect of speaker identity, voice inflection, vocabulary, and message redundancy on infants' selection of vocal reinforcementJournal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1968
- Three Processes in the Child's Acquisition of SyntaxHarvard Educational Review, 1964
- Control of grammar in imitation, comprehension, and productionJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1963
- On learning the grammatical order of words.Psychological Review, 1963