Communication patterns of African American girls and boys from low-income,urban backgrounds

This study investigated gender effects on the conversational strategies use d among 106 African American children (mean age = 7 years) from urban, low- income family backgrounds. Same- and mixed-gender pairs of children from th e same grade level in an inner-city school were provided with toy bear pupp ets and asked to play together for 5 min. Conversations were coded using Le aper's Psychosocial Processes Coding Scheme, which classifies communication acts as either collaborative, controlling, informing, obliging, or withdra wing. Girls and boys were more similar than different. However, gender-rela ted variations were found. Boys were more likely than girls to use controll ing acts and domineering exchanges in same-gender pairs but not in mixed-ge nder pairs. Girls were more likely than boys to use a combination of collab orative and informing acts. For partner gender effects we found that contro lling acts and domineering exchanges were less likely-whereas informing act s were more likely-to take place when children were matched with a girl tha n when they were matched with a boy. Findings replicate many of the gender effects on communication style reported in a prior study (Leaper, 1991) tha t used a similar procedure and coding strategy with a sample of middle-inco me children from mostly European American backgrounds.