Kidwell2006a

Kidwell2006a
BibType	ARTICLE
Key	Kidwell2006a
Author(s)	Mardi Kidwell, Don H. Zimmerman
Title	'Observability' in the interactions of very young children
Editor(s)
Tag(s)	EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Children, Nonverbal Communication, Embodied interaction, Gaze, Joint Attention, Misconduct
Publisher
Year	2006
Language
City
Month
Journal	Communication Monographs
Volume	73
Number	1
Pages	1-28
URL	Link
DOI	http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03637750600559673
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This paper demonstrates how children aged 1–2½ years monitor the attentional focus of their caregivers in situations of their sanctionable acts toward a peer (e.g., pushing) and organize their conduct to evade, or alternately draw, a caregiver's attention to these events. A large literature in the psychological sciences documents a number of attention organizing behaviors that emerge in children's first 2 years, and links these behaviors to children's early understandings of intentionality. We propose, however, that children's orientations to their caregivers, and whether or not they will intervene, derive from their abilities to assess a range of “real world” contingences having to do with the fundamental observability of their conduct, that is, with whether or not, and how, a caregiver comes to see their activities. Our investigation concerns the communication resources that enable children to “read” the conduct of others, and position their own actions by reference to the actions of others, in strategic ways.

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