Children's developing ability to make sense of evaluative judgments based on a speaker's evaluative history

When someone says something is "okay," it is not always clear what they mean. It could mean they like it. It could mean they do not like it. To decide which interpretation is correct, we can use that speaker's past evaluative comments to determine their evaluative baseline and assess whether "okay" falls below or above it. Across two studies (N = 366), we examined whether children (aged 5-8) and adults do so. The always-likes character had a history of making positive evaluations. The never-likes character had a history of making negative evaluations. In Study 1, 7-year-olds and adults (but not 5-year-olds) more frequently inferred that the never-likes character liked the item compared to the always-likes character. In Study 2, after being explicitly told that "it's okay" could mean that the speaker liked or did not like the item, both 5- to 8-year-old children and adults more frequently inferred that the never-likes character liked the item compared to the always-likes character. With increasing age, participants' tendency to interpret "it's okay" positively decreased across conditions. These results contribute to our understanding of how children and adults make sense of ambiguous statements in evaluative contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).