6 research outputs found
How do three-year-olds use relevance inferencing to interpret indirect speech?
If a child asks a friend to play football and the friend replies âI have a coughâ, the requesting child must make a ârelevance inferenceâ to determine the communicative intent. Relevance inferencing is a key component of pragmatics, that is, the ability to integrate social context into language interpretation and use. We tested which cognitive skills relate to relevance inferencing. Additionally, we asked whether childrenâs lab-based pragmatic performance relates to childrenâs parent-assessed pragmatic language skills. We tested 3½- to 4-year-olds (Study 1: N = 40, Study 2: N = 32). Children were presented with video-recorded vignettes ending with an utterance requiring a relevance inference, for which children made a forced choice. Study 1 measured childrenâs Theory of Mind, their sentence comprehension and their real-world knowledge and found that only real-world knowledge retained significance in a regression analysis with childrenâs relevance inferencing as the outcome variable. Study 2 then manipulated childrenâs world-knowledge via priming but found this did not improve childrenâs performance on the relevance inferencing task. Study 2 did, however, find a significant correlation between childrenâs relevance inferencing and a measure of morpho-syntactic production. In both studies parents rated their childrenâs pragmatic language usage in daily life, which was found to relate to performance in our lab-based relevance inferencing task. This set of studies is the first to empirically demonstrate that lab-based measures of relevance inferencing are reflective of childrenâs pragmatic abilities âin the wildâ. We argue that real-world knowledge is a necessary (but not sufficient) for relevance inferencing
Psychological interventions in psychosis in children and adolescents:a systematic review
How do three-year-olds use relevance inferencing to interpret indirect speech
If a child asks a friend to play football and the friend replies âI have a coughâ, the requesting child must make a ârelevance inferenceâ to determine the communicative intent. Relevance inferencing is a key component of pragmatics, that is, the ability to integrate social context into language interpretation and use. We tested which cognitive skills relate to relevance inferencing. Additionally, we asked whether childrenâs lab-based pragmatic performance relates to childrenâs parent-assessed pragmatic language skills. We tested 3½- to 4-year-olds (Study 1: N = 40, Study 2: N = 32). Children were presented with video-recorded vignettes ending with an utterance requiring a relevance inference, for which children made a forced choice. Study 1 measured childrenâs Theory of Mind, their sentence comprehension and their real-world knowledge and found that only real-world knowledge retained significance in a regression analysis with childrenâs relevance inferencing as the outcome variable. Study 2 then manipulated childrenâs world-knowledge via priming but found this did not improve childrenâs performance on the relevance inferencing task. Study 2 did, however, find a significant correlation between childrenâs relevance inferencing and a measure of morpho-syntactic production.
In both studies parents rated their childrenâs pragmatic language usage in daily life, which was found to relate to performance in our lab-based relevance inferencing task. This set of studies is the first to empirically demonstrate that lab-based measures of relevance inferencing are reflective of childrenâs pragmatic abilities âin the wildâ. We argue that real-world knowledge is a necessary (but not sufficient) for relevance inferencing
How do three-year-olds use relevance inferencing to interpret indirect speech
Two studies with English-speaking three-year-olds. Study 1 also has measures of sentence comprehension, age, Theory of Mind and real-world knowledge (WPSSI 'Information' sub-test). Study 2 examined whether priming real world knowledge improves performance in relevance inferencing