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Children's Comprehension of Implicit Messages to Interpret Ambiguous Requests
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Abstract:
The current study explored young children’s ability to use past linguistic information to make pragmatic inferences in a referentially ambiguous situation. Eighty-three 2.5-year-old and 3- year-old children heard a speaker convey her preference for an absent object, using either negative (i.e., “I do not like ducks”) or affirmative (i.e., “I like ducks”) sentences. When two objects become perceptually present (i.e., duck and turtle), the speaker gave an ambiguous request (“Can you give one to me?”). Results showed that three-year-old children were successful in using the speaker’s past affirmative information to reason about which object she desired, however, inferencing abilities were hindered following negative sentences. Two and a half-year-old children did not succeed with neither affirmative nor negative sentences. This work provides important insight into how young children interpret implicit verbal messages to make inferences about another person’s communicative request. ; M.A. ; 2019-11-15 00:00:00
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Keyword:
0620; Absent Reference; Desire Reasoning; Language Development; Verbal Negation
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URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/97669
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