Children's Use of Verbal Strategies in Resolving Conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, the child's use of language in one social context, the adversative eipsode. Although there is an increase with age in the complexity of interpersonal discourse, by the age of three children have already begun to display socially adaptive, conversational behavior (e.g., Garvey & Hogan, 1973; Mueller, 1972). Yet thus far, little mention has been made of the topic or content of children's discourse, that is, "what do children talk about together?" How do children interact to accomplish an objective-to perform a social task? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]