Communicative Acts: Use of a Randomization Procedure
Gordon Elias, Denis Meadows, and John D. Bain
School of Cognition, Language and Special Education, Griffith University

The extent to which mothers and fathers agree on what they identify as their infant’s communicative acts was investigated. Nineteen infants (6 at 6 months, 7 at 9 months, and 6 at 12 months) and their parents participated. A randomization procedure controlled for the frequencies and durations of the communicative acts identified by the parents, and the procedure produced a distribution of 10,000 “chance” agreement values for each parent pair with which their observed level of agreement was compared. The results indicated that, generally, parents could identify their infant’s communicative acts consistently, and that observed levels of agreement between parents were significantly higher than would be expected by chance. Differences between mothers and fathers on their identification of communicative acts are considered in terms of the emergence of the infant’s intention to communicate.