What makes communication run? Characteristics of immediate successes

Abstract

The factors which contribute to mothers' ready understanding of their preverbal infants' communicative intents were probed in a longitudinal, observational study of 3 infants at lunchtime during the second year of life. Episodes in which the mother readily compre hended the infant's signal ('immediate successes') were contrasted with episodes in which the mother initially failed to understand the infant's intent ('negotiation episodes'). These two types of episodes were found to differ primarily in three ways: the nature of the infant's initial signal, the communicative functions expressed, and the prevalance of communicative 'chains' on the same topic in a sequence of discourse.