Chieng, Adriana Chee Jing
(2025)
Conversational alignment in early school-aged children during adult-child interactions.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
Conversation is a fundamental part of children’s everyday lives. From a very early age, they begin to interact with others. To become competent conversational partners, children must not only acquire speech, language, and pragmatic skills but also learn to coordinate their communicative behaviours with those of their conversational partner. One such coordination ability is conversational alignment, which refers to similarities in communicative behaviour (e.g., verbal and non-verbal). While alignment has been extensively examined in adults, there remains a gap in our understanding of this phenomenon within the paediatric population, particularly in non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic) communities. To bridge this gap, this thesis investigated the alignment of early school-aged children and their adult interlocutors from Malaysia, a non-WEIRD country using a cross-sectional study design with a semi-structured conversational paradigm. Given the limited use of such paradigms in past literature, we first developed a novel methodological framework. Then, across three studies, we (a) determine whether early school-aged neurotypical children align their lexical choices during interactions, (b) examine whether speech rate alignment follows a similar developmental trajectory as lexical alignment in this age group, (c) investigate lexical alignment of autistic children and their neurotypical peers, and (d) assess the influence of conversational contexts, specifically task and partner familiarity, on the degree of alignment.
Chapter 2 presents the development of a semi-structured conversational paradigm, in which an adult interacted with a child virtually through task-oriented conversations. Refined through a series of pilot studies; first with the neurotypical children, then with the autistic children, the paradigm was designed to elicit natural yet structured interactions that reveal how children coordinate their speech and language behaviour in real-time communication. The final experimental design for the children consisted of two virtual sessions, during which each child engaged in task-oriented conversations with two different conversational partners. In one session, the child interacted with their parent (i.e., a familiar partner). In the other session, the child interacted with a university student (i.e., an unfamiliar partner). The goal was to examine the influence of task and partner type on conversational alignment. All sessions were conducted through Zoom and were audio-video recorded. These conversational files were subsequently annotated and transcribed by trained research assistants, using the PRAAT TextGrid function.
Study 1 (presented in Chapter 3) examined lexical alignment in early school-aged neurotypical children and the role of conversational context in their alignment. The lexical alignment score was operationalised as similarity in word choices (encompassing all word types) between interlocutors across consecutive conversational turns. This study recruited 45 English-dominant children aged 5 to 8 years to engage in two experimental sessions. During each session, an adult and a child engaged in two task-oriented conversations: a play-based task and a problem-solving task. Lexical alignment scores were extracted using automated ALIGN software. Our findings revealed that both early school-aged children and adults aligned their lexical choices, with adults demonstrating a greater degree of alignment than children. Additionally, the degree of alignment for both adults and children were moderated by the conversational contexts. Collectively, these findings suggest that lexical alignment is a robust phenomenon that serves as an important coordination strategy for early school-aged children and adults.
Study 2 (presented in Chapter 4) built on the findings of Study 1 by examining the development of alignment across multiple levels of communication. Using the same conversational corpus in Study 1, which demonstrated evidence of lexical alignment, this study investigated whether children aligned their speech rates with the adults. Speech rate alignment score was operationalised as similarity in speech rate values between two interlocutors across consecutive turns, without accounting for changes over time. The findings showed that only adults, not children, aligned their speech rates. Additionally, children's speech rate alignment was not influenced by task type, partner type, or age group. Furthermore, no correlation was observed between children’s lexical and speech rate alignments. These results indicate that alignment development is not a unitary phenomenon, which means that alignment at one level does not cascade into alignment at another level. Instead, the findings suggest that alignment at different levels of communication may be driven by distinct mechanisms that require different underlying skills and degrees of automaticity.
Study 3 (presented in Chapter 5) was designed to compare lexical alignment between neurotypical and autistic children within a semi-structured conversational paradigm. An additional conversational corpus, comprising recordings and conversational transcripts of interactions between autistic children and adult partners (n = 26), was collected. Each autistic child participated in two experimental sessions: one with their parent and one with the university student. In each session, the adult and the child engaged in a play-based task. Data from this corpus were compared with data from the play-based task in a previously collected corpus (i.e., Study 1) of neurotypical child-adult dyads (n = 45). The findings demonstrated that both autistic children and adults interacting with them exhibited a greater degree of alignment than neurotypical children and adults who interacted with them. Additional analyses explored whether the alignment between autistic children and their adult partners was influenced by partner type (i.e., parent or university student). However, these analyses found no compelling evidence that partner type influenced alignment. Taken together, the findings suggest that lexical alignment is neurotype-dependent. The variation in the degree of lexical alignment may reflect differences in the language, cognitive, and social communication abilities of autistic children compared to neurotypical children, potentially influencing how they dynamically re-use the adult conversational partners’ lexical choices.
In summary, this thesis offers insights into the conversational alignment of early school-aged children from a non-WEIRD community. The results show that alignment is a robust phenomenon in early school-aged children. While it is evident in children, the development and mechanisms of alignment are more complex than previously hypothesised. First, the findings suggest that lexical alignment is context-dependent. Next, the development of alignment across different levels of communication is modality-dependent. Finally, autistic children align to a different degree than neurotypical children, indicating that alignment is neurotype-dependent. Taken together, these results suggest that alignment in early school-aged children is shaped by context, modality, and neurotype.
| Item Type: |
Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
(PhD)
|
| Supervisors: |
Wong, Tze Peng
Borrie, Stephanie A.
Wynn, Camille J.
de Vries, Marieke |
| Keywords: |
conversational alignment; adult-child interaction; early school-aged children; lexical; speech rate; neurotype; context; modality |
| Subjects: |
L Education > LC Special aspects of education |
| Faculties/Schools: |
University of Nottingham, Malaysia > Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences > School of Education |
| Related URLs: |
|
| Item ID: |
81424 |
| Depositing User: |
Chieng, Adriana
|
| Date Deposited: |
26 Jul 2025 04:40 |
| Last Modified: |
26 Jul 2025 04:40 |
| URI: |
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/81424 |
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