Self-disclosure in the everyday conversations of kindergarten-aged children
Abstract
What function does self-disclosing conversation play in the conversations of young
children? Two studies were conducted to investigate how 5 14 year old children self-disclose
in their everyday conversations. Both studies video-recorded children’s self-disclosing
conversations while they participated in an art activity. Study 1 investigated the
effect of two conversational partner characteristics (age of partner and partner familiarity),
and of the conversational context on children’s self-disclosing behavior. Children
were paired with an unfamiliar adult, an unfamiliar peer, or a familiar peer play
partner, and conversations were recorded in three interaction contexts. Self-disclosure
was found to be a more frequent topic of conversation in a fairly barren conversational
environment than during an art activity. In each context, however, children self-disclosed
at least twice as often with an unfamiliar as with a familiar play partner. There
was no difference in self-disclosing behavior for children paired with an unfamiliar
adult or an unfamiliar peer. Study 2 was designed to investigate a possible function
for increased self-disclosing with an unfamiliar partner: that children use self-disclosure
in early conversations with unfamiliar partners to gauge the desirability of future
interaction. It was hypothesized that children would evaluate unfamiliar partners
who did not participate in self-disclosure less favorably than children paired with
a self-disclosing partner. A methodology was designed to allow children to think they
were talking to another child when they were actually speaking with a researcher trained
to talk like a five-year-old. Children were randomly paired with a play partner who
either reciprocated or did not reciprocate self-disclosing conversation, and behavioral
and evaluative] reactions were measured. Results indicated that children paired with
a non-reciprocating partner became less persistent in their self-disclosing initiations
over time. Children paired with a reciprocating partner self-disclosed at similar
levels throughout the interaction. Evaluative differences were also found. Children
paired with a non-reciprocating partner rated the unfamiliar peer significantly lower
than children paired with a partner who reciprocated self-disclosure. Based on these
findings, it was concluded that young children are differentially sensitive to the
self-disclosing behavior of unfamiliar conversation partners, and that they use participation
in self-disclosure as a gauge for establishing initial connections with unfamiliar
partners.
Description
This thesis was digitized as part of a project begun in 2014 to increase the number
of Duke psychology theses available online. The digitization project was spearheaded
by Ciara Healy.
Type
DissertationDepartment
PsychologyPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13585Published Version (Please cite this version)
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