Visitor studies of the ʻtime and motionʼ kind led to the widespread development of concepts such as attracting power, holding power and exit gradient. Recent studies in exhibitions have, whilst still paying attention to the spatial and temporal issues, begun to consider the cognitive content of the ʻdialogueʼ between the visitor and the exhibit designer. Such studies have focused on the leisure visitor and not on the out of school visits organized as part of the curriculum entitlement for pupils. The paper will consider a methodological approach to collecting qualitative material and transforming it into quantifi able data. The examples will be drawn from the studies of groups of children and their accompanying adults during school organized visits to a variety of types of animal exhibits in the zoo and will consider the effect of the presence of an adult on the content of the conversations of the groups.