Abstract
The purpose of this study is to construct the model that can evaluate the aspects of verbal communication at early infancy. Based on Austin's Speech Act Theory, we constructed the model of effective communication as in Fig. 1, and considered of its applicability in terms of language teaching. The model was composed of two main factors, context and situation. The contextual factor was evaluated by observing the relationship between prior events, utterances or behavior and utterances analyzed. The situational factor was evaluated either truth of constative utterances or felicity of performative utterances. Judging conformity between utterances and these two factors, we decided the levels of effectiveness on communication at each utterance. Three female infants (name: K, Y, and M) at the period of single-word utterances were observed during three or six months. Observation of infants was performed at playing room with their parent (mainly their mother), playing and communicating freely. Utterances and behavior at each session were recorded on videotape. According to the model, the corps of three infants were analyzed and classified in six types. Then the change of the ratio of six types to whole utterances with age and the characteristics of configulation within them were examined in each infant. And the conformity of non-verbal responses from directive utterances of parents were recorded and analyzed in the same manner. As a result, type I utterances which communicated the meaning with the best effectiveness were the highest ratio in three infants, and the configulation of ratio was considerably stable within age and infants. Moreover, configulation of Sub. K was gradually changed with age to the same pattern of Sub. Y and M. And K's nonverbal responses decreased with age in contrast to the increase of verbal one. This pointed out that the model could represent the transformation of response mode and quality from behavioral to verbal. Therefore, we considered that the configulation of ratio was a major index for evaluating the characteristics of verbal communication. And it was useful as a method to evaluate the performance of communication with language or mental retarded children at teaching session. This model would realize the Speech Act Theory by transforming to psychological model which could use for evaluating the communicative performance. But illocutionary and perlocutionary act of utterances were not analyzed in any detail at this model, and we suggested that further refinement of the model would be needed in terms of practical studies.
