Cover not available
Part of
Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Danielle Matthews
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 10] 2014
► pp. 53–70

Turn-taking

Conversation is a structured, joint action for which children need to learn a specialized set skills and conventions. Because conversation is a primary source of linguistic input, we can better grasp how children become active agents in their own linguistic development by studying their acquisition of conversational skills. In this chapter I review research on children’s turn-taking. This fundamental skill of human interaction allows children to gain feedback, make clarifications, and test hypotheses at every stage of development. I broadly review children’s conversational experiences, the types of turn-based contingency they must acquire, how they ask and answer questions, and when they manage to make timely responses.
Published online: 26 June 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.10.04cas
References (109)
Anselmi, D., Tomasello, M., & Acunzo, M. (1986). Young children’s responses to neutral and specific contingent queries. Journal of Child Language , 13(1), 135–144. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berger, J., & Cunningham, C.C. (1983). Development of early vocal behaviours and interactions in Down’s Syndrome and nonhandicapped infant-mother pairs. Developmental Psychology 19(3), 322–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bloom, K. (1974). Eye contact as a setting event for infant learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 17(2), 250–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1975). Social elicitation of infant vocal behaviour. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 20(1), 51–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1984). Distinguishing between social reinforcement and social elicitation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 19(1), 209–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1988). Quality of adult vocalizations affects the quality of infant vocalizations. Journal of Child Language , 15(3), 469–480. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bloom, K., & Lo, E. (1990). Adult perceptions of vocalizing infants. Infant Behaviour and Development , 13(2), 209–219. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bloom, K., Russell, A., & Wassenberg, K. (1987). Turn taking affects the quality of infant vocalizations. Journal of Child Language , 14(2), 211–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bloom, L. (1983). Discussion: Of continuity and discontinuity and the magic of language development. In R.M. Golinkoff (Ed.), The Transition from Prelinguistic to Linguistic Communication: Issues and Implications (pp. 79–92). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Brennan, S.E., & Williams, M. (1995). The feeling of another’s knowing: Prosody and filled pauses as cues to listeners about the metacognitive states of speakers. Journal of Memory and Language , 34(3), 383–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Byers-Heinlein, K., Burns, T.C., & Werker, J.F. (2008). The roots of bilingualism in newborns. Psychological Science , 21(3), 343–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casillas, M, & Werker, J.F. (in preparation). The roots of bilingualism in newborns. Taking the floor on time: delay and deferral in children’s turn taking. Manuscript, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
Casillas, M., & Frank, M.C. (2012). Cues to turn boundary prediction in adults and preschoolers. In S. Brown-Schmidt, J. Ginzburg, & S. Larsson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (pp. 61–69). Paris: Université Paris-Diderot.
Casillas, M., Bobb, S.C. & Clark, E.V. (under review). Turn-taking, timing, and access in early language acquisition. Manuscript, Stanford University.
Cherry, L.J. (1979). The role of adults’ requests for clarification in the language development of children. In D. Freedle (Ed.), New Directions in Discourse Processing (pp. 237–286). ­Hillsdale, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Chouinard, M.M., & Clark, E.V. (2003). Adult reformulations of child errors as negative evidence. Journal of Child Language , 30(3), 637–669. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V. (1982). Language change during language acquisition. In M.E. Lamb & A.L. Brown (Eds.), Advances in Developmental Psychology , Vol.2 (pp. 171–195). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
. (2009). First Language Acquisition (2nd Ed.). Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V., & Bernicot, J. (2008). Repetition as ratification: How parents and children place information in common ground. Journal of Child Language , 35(2), 349–372. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H.H. (1996). Using language . Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H.H., & Brennan, S.E. (1991). Grounding in communication. In L.B. Resnick, J.M. Levine & S.D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp. 127–149). Washington DC: American Psychological Association Books. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H.H., & FoxTree, J.E. (2002). Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking. Cognition , 84(1), 73–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H.H., & Marshall, C. (1981). Definite reference and mutual knowledge. In A.K. Joshi, B.L. Webber & I.A. Sag (Eds.), Elements of Discourse Understanding (pp. 10–63). ­Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Corrin, J. (2010). Maternal repair initiation at MLU Stage I: The developmental power of ‘hm?’ First Language , 30(3–4), 312–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corsaro, W.A. (1977). The clarification request as a feature of adult interactive styles with young children. Language in Society , 6(2), 183–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Craig, H. & Gallagher, T. (1982). Gaze and proximity as nonverbal turn regulators within three-party and two-party conversations. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research , 25(1), 32–42.Google Scholar
De Ruiter, J.-P., Mitterer, H., & Enfield, N.J. (2006). Projecting the end of a speaker’s turn: A cognitive cornerstone of conversation. Language , 82(3), 525–535. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dodd, B. (1975). Children’s understanding of their own phonological forms. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 27(2), 165–172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DuncanJr., S. (1972). Some signals and rules for taking speaking turns in conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 23(2), 283–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunn, J., & Shatz, M. (1989). Becoming a conversationalist despite (or because of) having an older sibling. Child Development , 60(2), 399–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ensor, R., & Hughes, C. (2008). Content or connectedness? Mother-child talk and early social understanding. Child Development , 79(1), 201–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1970). Discourse agreement: How children answer questions. In J.R. Hayes (Ed.), Cognition and the Development of Language (pp. 79–107). New York, NY: Wiley.Google Scholar
. (1979). Children’s verbal turn-taking. In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), Developmental Pragmatics (pp. 391–414). New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
. (1982). Ask and it shall be given you: Children’s requests. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Georgetown Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (pp. 235–245). Washington DC: Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Evans, M.A. (1985). Self-initiated speech repairs: A reflection of communicative monitoring in young children. Developmental Psychology , 21(2), 365–371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forrester, M.A. (2008). The emergence of self-repair: A case study of one child during the early preschool years. Research on Language and Social Interaction , 41(1), 99–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forrester, M.A., & Cherington, S.M. (2009). The development of other-related conversational skills: A case study of conversational repair during the early years. First Language , 29(2), 166–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, T.M. (1977). Revision behaviors in the speech of normal children developing language. Journal of Speech and Hearing, Research , 20(2), 303–318.Google Scholar
. (1981). Contingent query sequences within adult-child discourse. Journal of Child Language , 8(1), 51–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, T.M., & Craig, H.K. (1982). An investigation of overlap in children’s speech. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research , 11(1), 63–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gardner, H.F., & Forrester, M.A. (2010). Analysing Interactions in Childhood: Insights from Conversation Analysis . Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Garvey, C., & Berninger, G. (1981). Timing and turn-taking in children’s conversations. Discourse Processes , 4(1), 27–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gearhart, M., & Newman, D. (1977). Turn-taking in conversation: Implications for developmental research. Quarterly Newsletter of the Institute for Comparative Human Development , 1, 7–9.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, J., & Kolliakou, D. (2009). Answers without questions: The emergence of fragments in child language. Journal of Linguistics , 45(3), 641–673. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gleason, J.B. (1975). Fathers and other strangers: Men’s speech to young children. In D.P. Dato (Ed.), Developmental Psycholinguistics: Theory and Applications (pp. 289–297). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Grice, H.P. (1967). William James Lectures. Harvard University.Google Scholar
. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hudson Kam, C.L., & Edwards, N.A. (2008). The use of uh and um by 3- and 4-year-old native English-speaking children: Not quite right, but not completely wrong. First Language , 28(3), 313–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ingram, D., & Tyack, D. (1979). Inversion of subject NP and aux in children’s questions. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research , 8(4), 333–341. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, G. (1973). A case of precision timing in ordinary conversation: Overlapped tag-positioned address terms in closing sequences. Semiotica , 9(1), 47–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1974). Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society , 3(2), 181–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaye, K. (1979). Thickening thin data: The maternal role in developing communication and language. In M. Bullowa (Ed.), Before Speech: The Beginning of Interpersonal Communication (pp. 191–206). Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Kaye, K., & Charney, R. (1981). Conversational asymmetry between mothers and children. Journal of Child Language , 8(1), 35–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaye, K., & Fogel, A. (1980). The temporal structure of face-to-face communication between mothers and infants. Developmental Psychology , 16(5), 454–464. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendon, A. (1967). Some functions of gaze direction in social interaction. Acta Psychologica, 26, 22–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2004). Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Kidd, C., White, K.S. & Aslin, R.N. (2011). Toddlers use speech disfluencies to predict speakers’ referential intentions. Developmental Science , 14(4), 925–934. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kidwell, M., & Zimmerman, D.H. (2007). Joint attention as action. Journal of Pragmatics , 39(3), 592–611. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, S.C. (1983). Pragmatics . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
. (2006). On the human ‘interaction engine’. In N.J. Enfield & S.C. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction (pp. 39–69). Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Lieberman, A.F. & Garvey, C. (1977). Interpersonal pauses in preschoolers’ verbal exchanges. The Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development . New Orleans, LA.Google Scholar
Lieven, E.V.M. (1978). Conversations between mothers and young children: Individual differences and their possible implications for the study of language learning. In N. Waterson & C. Snow (Eds.), The Development of Communication: Social and Pragmatic Factors in Language Acquisition (pp. 173–187). New York, NY: Wiley.Google Scholar
Mannle, S., & Tomasello, M. (1987). Fathers, siblings, and the bridge hypothesis. In K.E. Nelson & A. van Kleeck (Eds.), Children’s Language , Vol.6. (pp. 23–42). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Masataka, N. (1993). Effects of contingent and noncontingent maternal stimulation on the vocal behavior of three- to four-month-old Japanese infants. Journal of Child Language , 20(2), 303–312. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matthews, D., Butcher, J., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2012). Two- and four-year-olds learn to adapt referring expressions to context: Effects of distracters and feedback on referential communication. Topics in Cognitive Science , 4(2), 184–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2010). What’s in a manner of speaking? Children’s sensitivity to partner-specific referential precedents. Developmental Psychology , 46(4), 749–760. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McDonald, L., & Pien, D. (1982). Mother conversational behaviour as a function of interactional intent. Journal of Child Language , 9(2), 337–358. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McTear, M. (1985). Children’s Conversation . Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mehler, J., Dupoux, E., Nazzi, T., & Dehaene-Lambertz, G. (1996). Coping with linguistic diversity: The infant’s viewpoint. In J.L. Morgan & K. Demuth (Eds.), Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping from Speech to Grammar in Early Acquisition (pp. 101–116). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Miura, I. (1993). Switching pauses in adult-adult and child-child turn takings: An initial study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research , 22(3), 383–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morgan, J.L., Bonamo, K.M. & Travis, L.L. (1995). Negative evidence on negative evidence. Developmental Psychology , 31(2), 180–197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ninio, A. (1986). The illocutionary aspect of utterances. Discourse Processes , 9(2), 127–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nomikou, I., & Rohlfing, K.J. (2011). Language does something: Body action and language in maternal input to three-month-olds. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development , 3(2), 113–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, N.R. (1991). On the organization of corrective exchanges in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics , 16(1), 59–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oller, D.K. (1981). Infant vocalizations: Exploration and reflexivity. In R.E. Stark (Ed.), Language Behaviour in Infancy and Early Childhood (pp. 85–103). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Olsen-Fulero, L., & Conforti, J. (1983). Child responsiveness to mother questions of varying type and presentation. Journal of Child Language , 10(3), 495–520. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olson-Fulero, L. (1982). Style and stability in mother conversational behavior: A study of individual differences. Journal of Child Language , 9(3), 543–564.Google Scholar
Revelle, G., Wellman, H., & Karabenick, J. (1985). Comprehension monitoring in preschool children. Child Development , 56(3), 654–663. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberts, F., Francis, A.L., & Morgan, M. (2006). The interaction of inter-turn silence with prosodic cues in listener perceptions of “trouble” in conversation. Speech Communication , 48(9), 1079–1093. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robinson, E. (1981). Conversational tactics and the advancement of the child’s understanding about referential communication. In W. Robinson (Ed.), Communication in Development (pp. 235–257). New York, NY: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robinson, E.J., & Robinson, W.P. (1985). Teaching children about verbal referential communication. International Journal of Behavioral Development , 8(3), 285–299. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ross, H.S. & Lollis, S.P. (1987). Communication within infant social games. Developmental Psychology , 23(2), 241–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A. & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language , 50(4), 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salonen, T., & Laakso, M. (2008) Self-repair of speech by four-year-old Finnish children. Journal of Child Language , 36(4), 855–882. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E.A. (1979). The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. In T. Givón (Ed.), Syntax and Semantics , Vol.12 (pp. 261–286). New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
. (1988). Presequences and indirection: Applying speech act theory to ordinary conversation. Journal of Pragmatics , 12(1), 55–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2000). Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language in Society , 29(1), 1–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language , 53(2), 361–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schieffelin, B. (1990). The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Scollon, R. (1976). Conversations with a One Year Old . Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Shatz, M., & Gelman, R. (1973). The development of communication skills: Modification in the speech of young children as a function of the listener. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development , 38, 1–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shatz, M., & O’Reilly, A.W. (1990). Conversational or communicative skill? A reassessment of two-year-olds’ behaviour in miscommunication episodes. Journal of Child Language , 17(1), 131–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, V.L., & Clark, H.H. (1993). On the course of answering questions. Journal of Memory and Language , 32(1), 25–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snow, C.E. (1977). The development of conversation between mothers and babies. Journal of Child Language , 4(1), 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stern, D.N., Jaffe, J., Beebe, B. & Bennet, S.L. (1975). Vocalizing in unison and in alternation: Two kinds of communication within the mother-infant dyad. Annals of New York Academy of Sciences , 263(1), 89–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, T., Enfield, N.J., Brown, P., Englert, C., Hayashi, M., Heinemann, T. & Levinson, S.C. (2009). Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 106(26), 10587–10592. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokes, W.T. (1977). Motivation and language development: The struggle towards communication. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development , New Orleans.
Tarplee, C. (1996). Working on young children’s utterances: Prosodic aspects of repetition during picture labeling. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & M. Selting (Eds.), Prosody in Conversation: Interactional Studies (pp. 406–435). Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2010). Next turn and intersubjectivity in children’s language acquisition. In H. ­Gardner & M. Forrester (Eds.), Analysing Interactions in Childhood:Insights from Conversation Analysis (pp. 3–22). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tice, M.C. & Henetz, T. (2011). Turn boundary projection: Looking ahead. In L. Carlson, C. Hoelscher, & T.F. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 838–843). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Tomasello, M. (1988). The role of joint attentional processes in early language development. Language Sciences , 10(1), 69–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M., Conti-Ramsden, G., & Ewert, B. (1990). Young children’s conversations with their mothers and fathers: Differences in breakdown and repair. Journal of Child Language , 17(1), 115–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weist, R., & Stebbins, P. (1972). Adult perceptions of children’s speech. Psychonomic Science , 27(6), 359–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wells, B., & Macfarlane, S. (1998). Prosody as an interactional resource: Turn-projection and overlap. Language and Speech , 41(3–4), 265–294.Google Scholar
Wells, B., & Corrin, J. (2004). Prosodic resources, turn-taking and overlap in children’s talk-in-interaction. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & C. Ford (Eds.), Sound Patterns in Interaction . (pp. ­119–146). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wooton, A. (1994). Object transfer, intersubjectivity and 3rd position repair: Early developmental observations of one child. Journal of Child Language , 21(3), 171–198.Google Scholar
Wootton, A.J. (1997). Interaction and the development of mind . Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wootton, A. (2007). Interaction and the Development of Mind . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Cited by (12)

Cited by 12 other publications

Carolus, Amy E., Katie A. McLaughlin, Lilliana J. Lengua, Meredith L. Rowe, Margaret A. Sheridan, Maureen Zalewski, Lyndsey Moran & Rachel R. Romeo
2024. Conversation disruptions in early childhood predict executive functioning development: A longitudinal study. Developmental Science 27:1 DOI logo
Fernández-Flecha, María, Andrea Junyent & María Blume
2023. Pragmatic development in Peruvian children. Pragmatics & Cognition 30:2 ► pp. 377 ff. DOI logo
Horváth, Viktória & Valeria Krepsz
2023. Temporal characteristics of child-adult conversations: utterances and turn-taking. Taikomoji kalbotyra :19 ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Sudartinah, Titik
2023. A Conversation Analysis of Two-year-old Children’s Speech in Child-Adult Interactions. Jurnal Obsesi : Jurnal Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini 7:3 ► pp. 3345 ff. DOI logo
Glick, Aaron R., Fauzia S. Saiyed, Katia Kutlesa, Kristine H. Onishi & Aparna S. Nadig
2022. Implications of video chat use for young children's learning and social–emotional development: Learning words, taking turns, and fostering familial relationships. WIREs Cognitive Science 13:5 DOI logo
Li, Jiarui, Marisa Casillas, Sho Tsuji & Yukie Nagai
2022. 2022 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), ► pp. 164 ff. DOI logo
Liu, Ruey-Ying
2022. Guiding Children to Respond: Prioritizing Children’s Participation Over Interaction Progression. Research on Language and Social Interaction 55:2 ► pp. 184 ff. DOI logo
Matthews, Danielle & Ciara Kelly
2022. Pragmatic development in deaf and hard of hearing children: A review. Deafness & Education International 24:4 ► pp. 296 ff. DOI logo
Degotardi, Sheila & Feifei Han
2020. Quality of educator-infant conversational interactions among infants experiencing varying quantity of linguistic input. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 28:5 ► pp. 743 ff. DOI logo
Fields‐Olivieri, Margaret A. & Pamela M. Cole
2019. Sequences of toddler negative emotion and parent–toddler verbal communication during a waking day. Infancy 24:6 ► pp. 857 ff. DOI logo
Donnarumma, Francesco, Haris Dindo, Pierpaolo Iodice & Giovanni Pezzulo
2017. You cannot speak and listen at the same time: a probabilistic model of turn-taking. Biological Cybernetics 111:2 ► pp. 165 ff. DOI logo
Küntay, Aylin C. & Duygu Özge
2014. Word order as a structural cue and word reordering as an interactional process in early language acquisition. In Language in Interaction [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 12], ► pp. 231 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.