Study on Situations in Which Speaking is Encouraged : Focusing on Eye-contact

Abstract

Mutual speech activities in small groups were analyzed by looking at eye-contact and turn-taking in speech acts. As a result, it was revealed that the speakers' line of sight had a strong effect on turn-taking and that children with a lack of eye-contact with others tended to speak less. In accordance with these results, each member in the small groups was encouraged to recognize him or herself as being a listener, and then the children who spoke less learned to maintain eye-contact and gradually increased their amount of speech and backchanneling. This result suggests that we should not pursue speech-defining factors as being intrinsically caused by individuals, but we should see speech as an interactive event and proper instructions should be provided for better communication.