The interlocutor is a person that takes part in a conversation. The interlocutor can be considered as part of the context of a conversation. According to Ervin-Tripp (2000) the familiarity of interlocutor is one of the main contextual influences. Adams‟s research review (2002) concluded that context is the main factor in informal language sampling specifically in pragmatics. Also, Hoff (2010) reported that “the evidence of context effects comes from several different research traditions, however the literature does not provide a unified picture of the nature of context or of their underlying process” (Hoff, 2010, p. 461).
According to Bornstein et al. (2000) TD 2-year-old children produce more speech and use a more varied vocabulary in talking to their mothers than to a researcher, and that can be explained by children‟s sensitivity to the support their mothers provide. Hoff (2003) found that during mother-child interaction the 4-year-old children of college- educated mothers used richer vocabularies than 4-year-olds with high school-educated mothers. However, these same children showed no group differences in the richness of the vocabularies they used when producing narratives for the researcher.
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Hoff (2010) investigated the effects of contextual variables on children‟s language use in conversation by conducting two studies. In the first study, 20 TD children between the ages of 1.5 and 2.2 were studied in dyadic conversation with their mothers in three settings: mealtime, toy play, and book reading. The findings that emerged from this study included: “a) the richness of the vocabulary that the children used and the relatedness of their speech to the speech of their conversational partner differed depending on the context of the conversation and b) the number of utterances produced and the grammatical complexity of the children‟s speech did not differ as a function of setting” (Hoff, 2010, p.466). The second study investigated the differences in speech produced by 16 TD children between the ages of 1.9 and 3.0 in dyadic conversation with three different conversational partners: a sibling between the ages of 4 and 5 years, another sibling between the ages of 7 and 8 years, and their mother. The study included a test of the effects of this contextual variable on the average verbal output, lexical richness, grammatical complexity, and discourse coherence. The results showed that a) the children used a richer vocabulary and produced more responses to questions in conversation with their mothers than with their older siblings; b) children produced more word types in conversation with their mothers than in conversation with both siblings; and c) Mean length of utterance (MLU) was (surprisingly) significantly lower in speech to the mother than in the speech to the younger siblings. This is somewhat inconsistent with the pattern of other findings, but it may reflect the higher frequency of single-word responses to questions during the interaction with the mothers.
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Scott and Taylor (1978) examined the influence of the sampling conditions (clinical setting with clinician and home setting with mother) in 3-6 year-old TD children and found the older children were more influenced by sampling conditions than the younger children. 4-year-olds speak differently to conversational partners of different ages, using syntactically more complex speech when talking to an adult than when talking to a 2-year-old child (Hoff, 2010).
To study the verbal interaction in children with ADHD researchers have used different formats such as child-mother interaction (e.g., Barkley et al., 1983) and child- examiner interaction (e.g., Zentall, 1988) and in addition child-only “private speech” (e.g., Copeland, 1979). The researcher in the current study did not manage to find any related previous research that studied interlocutor effects on children with ADHD in terms of verbal pragmatic skills. However a research study by Cunningham and Barkley (1979) studied the interactions of TD and children with ADHD with their mothers in free play and structured tasks (20 TD boys and 20 hyperactive boys ranging in age from 6-12 years). They observed that the children with ADHD were more active, less compliant, and less likely to remain on task than their TD peers. Regarding mothers of children with ADHD, they were less likely to respond positively to the child‟s social interactions, solitary play activities, or compliant on-task behaviours. Also, children with ADHD‟s mothers imposed more structure and control on the child‟s play, social interaction, and task-oriented activities which may contribute to the child‟s behavioural difficulties as
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suggested by the research authors. In tune with Cunningham and Barkley‟s (1979) research findings another research study by Mash and Johnston (1982) conducted a comparison of the mother-child interactions of young and older hyperactive and normal children (43 hyperactive and 53 normal children). Interactions were observed in structured tasks and unstructured play. The mother-child interactions of both younger (age range 2.11 to 6.11) and older (age range 7.3 to 9.10) hyperactive children were compared and contrasted with age-matched normal children. The results showed that the hyperactive children asked more questions and were more negative and noncompliant during play, especially the younger hyperactive group. Regarding the mothers of the hyperactive children it was observed that they were more directive and negative during play and less responsive to child-initiated interactions. Finally, the hyperactive children did not differ from normal children in their reactions to the mother-initiated behaviour during play but engaged in less independent activity when their mothers were noninteractive.
Cohen (1998) hypothesized that most families of children with ADHD experience an alteration in their communication patterns and dynamics. Also, Johnston and Mash (2001) reported in their review of families of children with ADHD that the literature has shown that children with ADHD have difficulties in interactions with their parents. It has also been hypothesized that problems in parent-child interactions are associated with exacerbations or a continuation of ADHD symptoms (Barkley, 2000). According to Green et al., (2014) the focus of mother-child interaction with the child with ADHD may shift from playing to maternal attempts to manage the child‟s behaviour, which would
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result in the interaction style becoming more directive. Previous studies (e.g., Cunningham & Barkley, 1979; Mash & Johnston, 1982) that investigated parent–child interaction patterns in families of children with ADHD compared to TD children consistently demonstrated (a) children with ADHD are less compliant and more negative in parent–child interactions, and (b) their parents use more commands, more negative statements, and less praise.
The previously discussed research studies have suggested that interlocutor differences have both a quantitative and qualitative impact on typically developing children‟s verbal interaction. At the same time the previous research was not so clear when it comes to the influence of interlocutor differences on the verbal interaction of children with ADHD. Therefore the author decided to investigate the impact of interlocutor familiarity on both the TD and ADHD groups. This was achieved by testing whether or not there was a statistically significant difference in the total number of verbal turns and the average number of words per minute for the FI-child (Familiar interlocutor- child) interaction compared to the UI-child (Unfamiliar Interlocutor-child) interaction. It was expected that interlocutor familiarity would have greater impact on the ADHD group.