Children understand communication intuitively, but indirect communication makes them think twice—Evidence from pupillometry and looking patterns

Schulze, Cornelia; Buttelmann, David

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105105

Cited by 4 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…However, given the cross-cultural differences between Eastern and Western speakers' communication preferences (Chen, 1995(Chen, , 2013Gudykunst, 1997;Gudykunst et al, 1996;Hall, 1976;Park et al, 2012) and differences in the comprehension of indirect communication found between Chinese native speakers and speakers from other cultural backgrounds (Taguchi et al, 2013), we expected that Chinese children might outperform their German peers in indirect communication comprehension. Also, we expected an increase in task mastery in general with age (Bucciarelli et al, 2003;de Villiers et al, 2009;Elrod, 1987;Loukusa et al, 2007Loukusa et al, , 2017Schulze & Buttelmann, 2021a;Schulze et al, 2013).…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 89%

“…However, to the best of our knowledge, comparative studies on communication comprehension between children from Eastern and Western cultures do not exist. 1 For Western cultures, Schulze et al (2013) found that 3-and 4-year-old children understand indirect communication, specifically relevance implicatures (see also Schulze & Buttelmann, 2021a;Schulze et al, 2020). The children saw short stories between two puppets that ended with a choice between two objects (e.g., when the puppets wanted to eat breakfast, they had the choice between a roll and cereals).…”

Section: Cultural and Developmental Differences In Communication Comp...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More specifically, we included Chinese children because previous research found differences between Chinese and Western subjects in a number of different cognitive tasks (for a review, see Ji & Yap, 2016). We included German children because German-speaking children were shown to understand indirect communication (i.e., relevance implicatures) from age 3 to 4 (Schulze & Buttelmann, 2021a;Schulze et al, 2013Schulze et al, , 2020. In order to investigate developmental differences, we included 4-and 6-year-old children.…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to investigate developmental differences, we included 4-and 6-year-old children. We chose these age groups because 4-year-olds have been found to understand indirect communication (i.e., relevance implicatures, see Schulze et al, 2013, see also Schulze & Buttelmann, 2021a;Schulze et al, 2020). Given that the literature on the development of context-sensitivity suggest differences between 4-and 6-year-old children, we included 6-year-olds as an older age group.…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each trial consisted of four phases in which video vignettes (phases a, b, and d) or a static picture of two alternative objects (phase c) were shown (see Figure 3). The German stimuli have been used in a number of previous studies (Schulze & Buttelmann, 2021a;Schulze et al, 2013Schulze et al, , 2020 and have also been implemented and adapted for the use in different cultural contexts (e.g., Abbot-Smith et al, 2022). These original stimuli were translated into Chinese and/or newly created to fit the Chinese cultural context based on suggestions from native speakers.…”

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Context-Sensitivity Influences German and Chinese Preschoolers’ Comprehension of Indirect Communication

Schulze

Buttelmann

Zhu

et al. 2022

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

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Making inferences in communication is a highly context-dependent endeavor. Previous research found cultural variations for context-sensitivity as well as for communication comprehension. However, the relative impact of culture and context-sensitivity on communication comprehension has not been investigated so far. The current study aimed at investigating this interplay and tested 4- and 6-year-old children from Germany ( n = 132) and China ( n = 129). Context-sensitivity was measured with an adapted version of the Ebbinghaus illusion. In this task, children have to discriminate the size of two target circles that only appear to be of similar size due to context circles surrounding the target circles. As expected, performance scores indicated higher degrees of context-sensitivity in Chinese compared to German children and that 6-year-olds were more context-sensitive than 4-year-olds. Further, in an object-choice communication-comprehension task, children watched videos with puppets performing every-day activities (e.g., pet care) and had to choose between two options (e.g., dog or rabbit). A puppet expressed what she wanted either directly (“I want the rabbit”) or indirectly (“I have a carrot”). The children had to choose one option to give to the puppet. In both cultures, 6-year-olds outperformed 4-year-olds and children understood direct communication better than indirect communication. Culture was found to affect children’s processing speed of direct communication. Moreover, culture influenced children’s context-sensitivity while context-sensitivity influenced children’s accuracy in the indirect (but not the direct) communication task. These findings demonstrate that taking context into account is especially important when we are confronted with indirect communication.

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Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Cultural and Developmental Differences In Communication Comp...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Context-Sensitivity Influences German and Chinese Preschoolers’ Comprehension of Indirect Communication

Schulze

Buttelmann

Zhu

et al. 2022

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

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Pupillometry in Developmental Psychology

Hepach

2024

Modern Pupillometry

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Modeling Individual Differences in Children’s Information Integration During Pragmatic Word Learning

et al. 2022

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Pragmatics is foundational to language use and learning. Computational cognitive models have been successfully used to predict pragmatic phenomena in adults and children – on an aggregate level. It is unclear if they can be used to predict behavior on an individual level. We address this question in children (N = 60, 3- to 5-year-olds), taking advantage of recent work on pragmatic cue integration. In Part 1, we use data from four independent tasks to estimate child-specific sensitivity parameters to three information sources: semantic knowledge, expectations about speaker informativeness, and sensitivity to common ground. In Part 2, we use these parameters to generate participant-specific trial-by-trial predictions for a new task that jointly manipulated all three information sources. The model accurately predicted children’s behavior in the majority of trials. This work advances a substantive theory of individual differences in which the primary locus of developmental variation is sensitivity to individual information sources.

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Children understand communication intuitively, but indirect communication makes them think twice—Evidence from pupillometry and looking patterns

Cited by 4 publications

References 37 publications

Context-Sensitivity Influences German and Chinese Preschoolers’ Comprehension of Indirect Communication

Context-Sensitivity Influences German and Chinese Preschoolers’ Comprehension of Indirect Communication

Pupillometry in Developmental Psychology

Modeling Individual Differences in Children’s Information Integration During Pragmatic Word Learning

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