本研究旨在探討孩童在同儕對話中所使用的拒絕策略，以及說話者及聽者的性別對於拒絕策略選擇之影響。研究語料來自兩人或三人一組的孩童在玩耍時的對話，孩童的年紀在四歲七個月到五歲十個月之間。本研究主要採用Beebe等人所提供的拒絕策略分類，研究結果發現，孩童在同儕對話中使用較多的間接拒絕策略(70%)，這也顯示出孩童避免與同儕產生正面衝突，並且努力維護彼此間的友誼。在所有策略中，孩童最常使用的是簡單否定(simple negation: 31.8%)以及提供理由(reason: 26.7%)；此外，在這個年紀的孩童在一次拒絕中，大多只使用一種拒絕策略。
而在性別的影響方面，則發現在同性別的互動中，女生比男生使用了更多的直接拒絕策略；此外，與在同性別互動中的表現相比，女生在不同性別的互動中變得更直接，而男生則變得較委婉。研究也發現，孩童會根據不同性別選擇特定的拒絕策略，例如，男生較常對女生使用非語言性的迴避策略(nonverbal avoidance)。本研究中討論了造成此現象可能的原因，像是中國文化中女人的角色、家長對不同性別孩童的教育方式，和不同性別的孩童之間友誼的強弱等等。總而言之，研究發現不論是說話者的性別或者聽者的性別都會對拒絕策略的選擇造成一定的影響。

This study aims to explore children’s refusal performance in peer talk and how speakers’ and interlocutors’ genders influence their choice of refusal strategies. The natural conversations produced by dyads of triads of children aged from 4;7 to 5;10 were used for analysis. The refusal strategies adopted in this study are mainly based on Beebe et al. (1990)’s category. The results showed that children applied much more indirect refusal strategies (70%) than direct ones (30%) when refusing their peers, which indicates that they tried to avoid confrontation and make efforts to maintain their friendship. Among the strategies, children tended to employ simple negation (31.8%) and reason (26.7%) most frequently. In addition, children at this age applied only one refusal strategy in a refusal most of the time.

As for the influence of gender, it is observed that in same-gender interactions, girls used more direct strategies than boys. In addition, in cross-gender interactions, girls became more direct while boys were more indirect than in same-gender interaction. Moreover, children tended to choose certain strategy when refusing others of different gender; for example, boys used a lot more nonverbal avoidance when refusing girls than boys. Possible reasons such as women’s role in Chinese culture, children’s intensity of friendship between different gender, and parent’s educational style were discussed in the study in order to explain the gender differences. The findings, therefore, suggest that both speakers’ and interlocutors’ genders play an important role in children’s choice of refusal strategies.

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