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ERIC Number: EJ1393919
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0009-3920
EISSN: EISSN-1467-8624
Preschoolers Modulate Contrastive Inferences during Online Language Comprehension
Ju, Narae; Williams, Natalie; Sedivy, Julie; Chambers, Craig G.; Graham, Susan A.
Child Development, v94 n5 p1319-1329 Sep-Oct 2023
This study examined 4- and 5-year-olds' incremental interpretation of size adjectives, focusing on whether contrastive inferences are modulated by speaker behavior. Children (N = 120, 59 females, mostly White, tested between July, 2018 and August, 2019) encountered either a conventional or unconventional speaker who labeled objects in a correspondingly typical or atypical way. Critical utterances contained size adjectives (e.g., "Look at the big duck"). With conventional speakers, gaze measures indicated that children rapidly used the adjective to differentiate members of a contrasting pair, indicating that even 4-year-olds derive contrastive inferences. With unconventional speakers, contrastive inferences were delayed in processing. The findings demonstrate that preschoolers adjust their use of pragmatic cues when presented with evidence disconfirming their default assumptions about a speaker.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A