Development of the ability to distinguish communicative intention and literal message meaning

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.