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Participants in this study were 66 British toddlers who were observed at home with familiar peers on two occasions, six months apart. The majority of toddlers spoke to their peers, with short sequences of conversation emerging after the age of 24 months. The use of possessive pronouns emerged between 18 and 24 months of age and consolidated over the next year. Toddlers who said 'mine' were also more likely than other children to say 'yours.' The use of possessive pronouns was associated with other language about the possession of objects and references to the motivational states of desire and need, suggesting a general understanding of the concept of object possession. The use of possessive pronouns was initially associated with physical aggression but children who used possessive pronouns at the first visit were - significantly more likely to share objects with their peers six months later. The findings suggest that general conversational competence and the particular ability to talk about the possession of objects may facilitate positive relations with peers.
When do young children begin to converse with their peers and what do they talk about? Does their growing conversational ability promote positive social development? The aim of this paper is to examine a particular facet of toddlers' conversations, namely, their discussion of who owns or has the right to play with particular objects. A child's ability to converse with peers is likely to be refined in the contexts of cooperative play and conflict, with verbal statements, questions and replies being scaffolded by nonverbal actions. Thus, this paper focuses on the frequency and content of conversation as a component of peer interaction in the second and third years of life. Of particular interest is the extent to which toddlers talk about people's possessions, including the familiar phenomenon whereby a toddler asserts that a certain object is 'mine!'
In contrast to many other studies of early peer relationships that have observed unacquainted dyads in laboratories or larger groups of infants and toddlers in child care or playgroups (for reviews, see Eckerman & Peterman, 2004; Hay, Payne, & Chadwick, 2004), this study focuses on pairs of toddlers who know each other and spend time together in each other's homes (see also Ross, Tesla, Kenyon, & Lollis, 1990)....