Swedish toddlers’ use of turn-final gaze in dyadic child-parent interaction

Sammanfattning: Turn-final gaze at the interlocutor has been suggested to fill different functions in conversation: being monitoring, regulatory or response-seeking. 16 Swedish toddlers use of turn-final gaze in dyadic interaction with their parents was investigated at the ages 1;0, 1;6, 2;0, 2;6 and 3;0. The turn-final gaze behaviour was investigated for correlations to child age and language level. Additionally, child turn-final gaze in turn-final questions, in turns longer than 5 seconds and in different interaction contexts was examined.Results showed that the use of active turn final gaze increased over ages 1;0-2;0. No correlations between child use of turn-final gaze and child language level could be found. In turn-final questions, 93% of the turn-final gaze was active, i.e. was not present at the start of the turn. Turn-final gaze was used both during conversation and object-oriented interaction at all ages.A monitoring-response-seeking function of turn-final gaze was proposed to be used by the toddlers as a means to get the parent’s encouragement and approval of the child’s interactive language use. Additionally, the importance of choosing a suitable measure type of turn-final gaze while investigating small children was stressed.