Preschoolers’ sensitivity to referential ambiguity: evidence for a dissociation between implicit understanding and explicit behavior

Abstract

Four-year-olds were asked to assess an adult listener's knowledge of the location of a hidden sticker after the listener was provided an ambiguous or unambiguous description of the sticker location. When preschoolers possessed private knowledge about the sticker location, the location they chose indicated that they judged a description to be unambiguous even when the message was ambiguous from the listener's perspective. However, measures of implicit awareness (response latencies and eye movement measures) demonstrated that even when preschoolers had private knowledge about the sticker location, ambiguous messages led to more consideration of an alternative location and longer response latencies than unambiguous messages. The findings demonstrate that children show sensitivity to linguistic ambiguity earlier than previously thought and, further, that they can detect linguistic ambiguity in language directed to others even when their own knowledge clarifies the intended meaning.

On the generation of shared symbols

“…These spontaneous adjustments provided a sensitive index for quantifying inter-individual differences in communicative abilities close to the onset of those abilities. This sensitivity might arise from the implicit nature of the index of audience design used in this study, in line with findings previously obtained during language comprehension in children of similar age (Nilsen & Graham, 2012;Nilsen, Graham, Smith, & Chambers, 2008). Namely, in contrast to previous work 1 9 2 | C h a p t e r 5 .…”

“…Differences in outcome measures might also play a role, e.g. implicit measures of knowledge about a communicative interaction (as gathered through eye movements, reaction time, or movement times) vs. explicit verbal reports requiring a degree of executive control (Nilsen, et al, 2008;Rubio-Fernandez & Geurts, 2013).…”

How do 3- and 5-year-olds respond to under- and over-informative utterances?

“…Nilsen et al, 2008). Studies from the language learning literature suggest that sensitivity to ambiguity is present well before age 3, and in some simple cases by 13 months (Vaish et al, 2011).…”

Preschoolers’ sensitivity to speaker action constraints to infer referential intent

“…Eye gaze measures place very low task demands on children and provide ecologically valid insights into the moment-to-moment processes underlying the comprehension of language (Fernald, Zangl, Portillo, & Marchman, 2008). In addition, recent research has demonstrated that preschoolers often show evidence of certain referential communication abilities in eye gaze measures prior to demonstrating the abilities in their overt decisions (Berman et al, 2010;Nilsen & Graham, in press;Nilsen et al, 2008).…”

“…A number of studies have demonstrated that children as old as 6 years can have difficulty in expressing explicit awareness of message ambiguity both when making referential decisions and when evaluating message clarity (e.g., Beal & Flavell, 1982;Bearison & Levey, 1977;Beck, Robinson, & Freeth, 2008). However, studies that have employed highly sensitive measures, such as response latencies and eye gaze measures, have demonstrated that sensitivity to ambiguity emerges earlier during the preschool years (Matthews, Lieven, Theakston, & Tomasello, 2007;Nadig & Sedivy, 2002;Nilsen & Graham, 2009;Nilsen, Graham, Smith, & Chambers, 2008;O'Neill, 1996;Plumert, 1996). For example, 4-year-olds show an implicit appreciation for spatial ambiguity (Plumert, 1996) and can detect ambiguity in contexts where a child is a third party to a communicative exchange (Nilsen & Graham, in press;Nilsen et al, 2008) despite the fact that their explicit responses might not reflect these capabilities.…”