How About Ellipsis?: Young Children's Subject Bias in Interpreting Ambiguous "How About" Questions

Ellipsis refers to the omission of words or phrases, requiring listeners to fill in the missing elements from earlier in the conversation. Ambiguity in elliptical questions, such as "How about X," has received little attention in research on children's testimony. This study examined how 3- to 5-year-olds (n = 78) and adults (n = 30) interpreted "how about" questions. In the Sentence task, participants heard a statement describing one animal chasing another, followed by a "how about" question about a novel animal in a different array. Children and adults usually interpreted the "how about" question as asking about the novel animal as a subject. In the Question tasks, the first question clearly referred to an animal as either a subject ("Who's the [animal] chasing?") or an object ("Who's chasing the [animal]?"), followed by a "how about" question about a novel animal. Although the first question influenced both children's and adults' interpretation of the "how about" questions, children exhibited subject bias, often interpreting the "how about" question as referring to the novel animal as a subject. These findings suggest that ambiguous "how about" questions may lead to misinterpretation, and highlight the need to examine children's understanding of elliptical questions more broadly.