Research on the acquisition of Mayan languages has shown child-directed communication (CDC) to be low in frequency. Nevertheless, long-term linguistic-anthropological research with the Tsotsil Mayan in Southern Mexico has documented episodes in family life when children engage in interactional routines or interactional formats (IFs) with their…

The purpose of this study was to see if a social learning method for training verbal social skills might influence the social effectiveness of third grade children with low peer acceptance. Children were trained in three verbal skills: asking questions of peers; leading peers (e.g., offering useful suggestions or directions); and, offering…

This paper examines the power of particular affect and rejection socioquestions to produce characteristic patterns across all the sociometric choices of 576 fifth-graders in 18 classrooms. Of particular concern are the degrees of centrality exhibited in response to socioquestions which pertain to academic competence and failure and the overall…

A pilot experiment aimed at discovering sex-specific language patterns as exhibited by males and females in conversation with same-sex and other-sex partners falsified the hypothesis frequently stated in the literature that males hold the dominant role in mixed-sex verbal interaction, at least in regard to college students. Twelve dyadic…

This paper describes a method of analyzing audio-taped communicative events recorded in the fall and winter of a school year (1975-1976) in two kindergarten classrooms, and reports the results of an investigation of classroom communicative process. Three levels of analysis were developed to measure (1) number and kind of recorded conversational…