RESUMO
Children's sociocultural experiences vary around the world. Colombia is a South American country where the differences between socioeconomic statuses (SES) are huge. In this study, through the ECSP-E Scale, translated to Spanish and validated for linguistic and cultural equivalence, the development of three communicative functions was evaluated through an interactive sociopragmatic approach. The participants comprised 36 24-month-old children, raised in three different social contexts in Colombia, with the goal of comparing them across groups of SES. The lowest SES group sample subjects were representative of extreme poverty and members of an ethnic group, the Wayuú. Results for the communicative functions, namely social interaction (SI), joint attention (JA), and behavior regulation (BR), showed that the only function with no significant differences across SES was joint attention. This supports the hypothesis that the development of this function may be universal, in light of the fact that the Wayuú not only differed from other subjects in terms of their socioeconomic status but also in their culture. Higher SES was related to better social interaction, while Low SES was associated with better behavior regulation than their High SES peers. Consequently, results are discussed considering socioeconomic and cultural differences in the development of communication and social interactions, leading us to reexamine the paradigms, theories, and practices that are used when observing children raised in very poor environments.
RESUMO
Abstract The aim of this research was to study the planning of the execution of the Tower of Hanoï task (TOH) through gesture and speech. The effects of age and task complexity on gestures-speech mismatches were analyzed in 144 participants (48 children from 8 to 10 years old, 48 adolescents from 12 to 14 years old, and 48 adults from 18 to 20 years old) during their early explanations of the solution to the problem of the TOH. Results suggested effects from task complexity but not from age. Gesture-speech mismatches could be a possible way to analyze early explanations of the tasks, and the level of difficulty could be considered as a developmental indicator. The question of the relationship between gestures and speech during the planning of complex problems is in fact at the center of a passionate debate on the close relationship between thought and language. It is also at the heart of research on multimodal communication and thinking, according to which human cognition is based on verbal and nonverbal aspects of communicative behavior.
Resumen El objetivo de esta investigación fue estudiar la planificación de la ejecución de la tarea de la Torre de Hanoi (TOH) a través de los gestos y la palabra. Se analizaron los efectos de la edad y la complejidad de la tarea en las discordancias gestos-palabras en 144 participantes (48 niños de 8 a 10 años, 48 adolescentes de 12 a 14 años y 48 adultos de 18 a 20 años) durante sus explicaciones anticipadas a la resolución de TOH. Los resultados sugieren efectos de la complejidad de la tarea, pero no de la edad. Las discordancias gestos-palabras podrían constituirse en una manera posible de analizar explicaciones anticipadas a la resolución efectiva de las tareas, y el nivel de dificultad podría ser considerado como un indicador de desarrollo. La pregunta de la relación entre los gestos y las palabras durante la planificación de problemas complejos es, de hecho, el centro de un apasionado debate sobre la estrecha relación entre pensamiento y lenguaje. También está en el centro de la investigación sobre la comunicación y el pensamiento multimodales, según la cual la cognición humana se basa en los aspectos verbales y no verbales del comportamiento comunicativo.