Development of the Ability to Distinguish Communicative Intention and Literal Message Meaning

Abstract

Children's ability to distinguish the literal meaning of a message and the speaker's communicative intent was investigated in 2 experiments. First- and second-grade children evaluated brief referential communication messages for ambiguity under 2 conditions. In an informed condition, the children knew which referent the speaker had intended. In an uninformed condition, they did not know the intended referent. 2 communication systems were used. In Experiment 1, the messages were written on cards and read to the child; in Experiment 2, a novel communication system was used. The developmental pattern of results was similar for both studies. The results showed that the first graders in the informed condition often claimed that an ambiguous message could not refer to a referent the speaker had not meant, whereas children in the uninformed condition were able to detect the referential ambiguity of the message. There were no condition differences for the second graders. The results suggest that young children's ability to analyze the literal meaning of a message is affected by the accessibility of the speaker's communicative intent and that children may develop a general ability to analyze representations of communicative intention.

Recognition of figurative language and reading ability in Polish school children

“…Thus, the child has to be conscious that the linguistic expression is literally false. This problem has gained a renewed interest since theory of mind (TOM) theorists investigated children's understanding of the distinction between communicative intention and literal meaning (Beal, Flavell, 1984). According to TOM theories, intentionality derives from the general ability of children to understand the mental states of others.…”

Algunas cuestiones sobre el desarrollo del lenguaje de referencia mental: los problemas de los niños con el lenguaje de estados mentales

“…Se ha encontrado en los niños pequeños una sobre-enfatización de la importancia de la intención del hablante. La hipótesis de que conocer el significado pretendido del emisor puede hacer que el niño tenga más dificultades para darse cuenta de los problemas del mensaje y revisarlo, se comprueba en una tarea con mensajes contradictorios en textos cortos (Beal, 1987) y en una tarea con mensajes ambiguos (Beal y Flavell, 1984). Beal y Flavell indican que los niños se concentran primero en las intenciones del hablante (lo que quiere decir) más que en sus expresiones (lo que dice).…”

Relations between intelligence and the development of metaconceptual knowledge

“…In addition to questions that tapped children_s comprehension of referential intent (I meant X, but being a poor communicator I said Y; Beal & Flavell, 1984), and conceptual knowledge variations (experts would call this X, but novices would think it is a Y), we included questions that tapped children_s understanding of fundamental principles of concepts and categorization (Murphy, 2002). We then considered connections between these expressions of knowledge and children_s level of verbal intelligence (Study 1), and whether intelligence mediated the impact of such knowledge on children_s strategic performance on a Twenty Questions task (Study 2).…”