THE COMMUNICATION OF DIFFERENTIAL RELATIONSHIPS IN PRESCHOOL-CHILDREN- PREFERENCE AND SOCIAL THEME

We examined the conversations of 14 preschool children to explore diff erences in communication between friends and nonfriends in a well-esta blished group. Children's social preferences were identified by analys ing relative utterance frequencies which revealed a network structure of 4 cliques. We then examined whether the integration (inclusion/excl usion) and social theme (person/action) content of children's utteranc es, and the responses (accept/oppose) to these utterances, discriminat ed relationships in the social network. Our main findings were 1) Excl usive utterances were more likely to occur between nonfriends and to b e opposed. Inclusive utterances were more likely to occur between frie nds and to be accepted. 2) Person and action themes were used differen tially. In exclusion statements, nonfriends were more likely to be per sonally rejected whereas friends were more likely to have their action s rejected. In inclusion statements, personal references were more lik ely to be accepted between friends whereas references to a peer's acti ons tended to be accepted by both friends mid nonfriends. We concluded that children adapted the integration and social theme content of the ir utterances to relationship context in order to establish more intim ate interactions between friends and more distant interactions between nonfriends.