Abstract
Exposure to diverse communicative environments fosters a broader, more flexiblerepertoire of communicative behaviour. Children’s social networks may constitute ameaningful, yet underexplored, factor contributing to environmental diversity. In across-sectional study, we examined whether social network size in preschool children(N = 128, Mage = 4.06, SDage = 0.29) is associated with their communicative behaviourindicated via three aspects: visual perspective-taking, non-verbal cue understanding,and theory of mind (ToM). We ran two different types of analysis: first, theconventional weekly contact threshold to operationalise social network size. Thisanalysis revealed no significant associations with the outcome variables. Second, weconducted a data-driven grid search to identify the contact frequency threshold thatbest predicted each outcome. The results suggest distinct candidate thresholds acrossthe three communicative behaviours assessed, indicating that each behaviour isassociated with a different relevant level of contact frequency. Visual perspective-takingwas positively associated with social network size calculated using a threshold ofapproximately monthly contact. For non-verbal cue understanding, the best-fittingthreshold was about four interactions per week, at which social network size wasnegatively associated with task performance. We found no significant associationsbetween social network size and children’s ToM. The findings show associations betweenchildren’s social networks and pragmatic communication behaviour, but theseassociations are sensitive to how social network size is operationalised.