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A naturalistic study of the production of causal connectives by children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Allyssa McCabe  and
Carole Peterson
Allyssa McCabe
Affiliation:
Southeastern Louisiana University
Carole Peterson
Affiliation:
Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland
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Abstract

This study analysed the naturalistic productions of because and so by 96 children, vaged 3; 6–9; 6, vwhile vnarrating real, vpersonal events. Few semantic errors could be construed as evidence of confused thinking; none is a confusion vdescribed by Piaget. Of the vsemantically correct causal uses, 81 % encode psychological causality, mostly statements of other people's intentions. Other analyses revealed: (1) many of the relationships encoded are highly predictable, (2) virtually all causality occurred prior to the time of narration, (3) age trends are remarkably absent, (4) because and so are used in significantly different ways even by the youngest children, (5) only eight sentences showed a vreversal of the appropriate order of cause and effect. The discrepancy between the last finding and many other laboratory studies vwhich find many such reversals may be due to the fact that children are causally linking strictly successive events only 32 % of the time; for the rest, they are encoding events that partially or completely overlap in time.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , February 1985 , pp. 145 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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