THE USE OF PRONOUNS, CAUSAL CONNECTIVES AND TENSE IN YOUNG CHILDREN'S DESCRIPTIONS OF THEIR MENTAL CALCULATIONS

Abstract

The evidence presented suggests that after performing mental calculations young children who have given a correct answer are more likely to use expressions involving “you” than when they have given an incorrect answer. By contrast a higher proportion of expressions involving “I” are associated with incorrect than correct answers. Use of causal connectives such as “because” and expressions involving mixed tenses, rather than simply past tense, are also characteristic of responses associated with correct answers. This suggests that children's successful use of procedure is characterised by use of these ‘linguistic indicators’. When the level of generality that was expressed was analysed it was found that ‘general’ expressions were also associated with accuracy. This suggests that language use and conceptualisation may be interdependent.