Performative bias in children's interpretations of ambiguous referential communications

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Children's interpretation of communication is complex.
• Distinguishing between the literal meaning (locutionary content) and the intended meaning (performative force) is a developmental challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate why young children misinterpret ambiguous communications in referential tasks.
• To determine if children can assess literal meaning (locutionary adequacy) when speaker intent (performative force) is less prominent.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted with kindergarten and second-grade children.
• Experiment 1: Children matched communications to speakers based on informativeness or ambiguity.
• Experiment 2: Children responded to adequate/inadequate communications, choosing objects or indicating impossibility.

Main Results:

• Children's ability to correctly interpret ambiguous communications improved.
• This improvement occurred when they focused on the literal meaning (locutionary content) rather than the speaker's intent (performative force).

Conclusions:

• Young children's difficulties with ambiguous communication stem from prioritizing performative force over locutionary content.
• De-emphasizing performative force allows children to better evaluate locutionary adequacy, improving comprehension of ambiguous messages.