3‐Year‐Old Children Make Relevance Inferences in Indirect Verbal Communication

Abstract

Three studies investigated 3-year-old children's ability to determine a speaker's communicative intent when the speaker's overt utterance related to that intent only indirectly. Studies 1 and 2 examined children's comprehension of indirectly stated requests (e.g., "I find Xs good" can imply, in context, a request for X; N = 32). Study 3 investigated 3- and 4-year-old children's and adults' (N = 52) comprehension of the implications of a speaker responding to an offer by mentioning an action's fulfilled or unfulfilled precondition (e.g., responding to an offer of cereal by stating that we have no milk implies rejection of the cereal). In all studies, 3-year-old children were able to make the relevance inference necessary to integrate utterances meaningfully into the ongoing context.

Comprehension of degree modifiers by pre-school children: What does it mean to be ‘a bit cold’?

“…The current results also provide additional insights into the acquisition of relevance implicatures. The results of this study are compatible with earlier research (Tribushinina 2012, Schulze, Grassmann & Tomasello 2013 claiming that the ability to draw relevance inferences emerges earlier than what has been traditionally assumed in the literature (Elrod 1987, Bernicot, Laval & Chaminaud 2007, Loukusa, Leinonen & Ryder 2007, Verbuk & Schultz 2010. Young children can draw relevance inferences if inference-drawing is a natural part of an on-going interaction supported by joint attention (Tribushinina 2012, Schulze, Grassmann & Brought to you by | University Library Utrecht Authenticated Download Date | 1/15/15 10:49 AM Tomasello 2013).…”

“…Die vind ik saai 'That one I find boring') than 5-year-olds and adults. These results show, in line with Schulze, Grassmann & Tomasello (2013), that even very young children are able to grasp the argumentative orientation of evaluative adjectives. In the present study, this paradigm will be employed for studying the comprehension of degree-modified relative adjectives.…”

“…The children were tested in Experiment 2 using a procedure developed by Schulze, Grassmann & Tomasello (2013) and Tribushinina (2012). Schulze, Grassmann & Tomasello (2013) demonstrated that pre-schoolers are able to make relevance inferences when inference-drawing is naturally embedded in an ongoing interaction (e.g.…”

“…Schulze, Grassmann & Tomasello (2013) demonstrated that pre-schoolers are able to make relevance inferences when inference-drawing is naturally embedded in an ongoing interaction (e.g. a game), is supported by joint attention and is goal-oriented.…”

Parenting predictors of cognitive skills and emotion knowledge in socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers

“…Experimental evidence shows that 24-month-olds demonstrate predictive understanding of causal relations (Sobel & Kirkham, 2006) and that their understanding of causal relationships can be significantly enhanced when adults provide simple, verbal explanations about how objects function (Bonawitz, Horowitz, Ferranti & Schultz, 2009). As children develop, their inferential reasoning capacities become more adult-like with 3-year-olds making accurate relevance inferences about adults’ ambiguous communication (Schulze, Grassmann, & Tomasello, 2013) and 4-year-olds using past events to accurately reason about a character's future-oriented thoughts, emotions, and decisions (Lagattuta & Sayfan, 2013). …”