Preschoolers modulate contrastive inferences during online language comprehension.

Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 0372725 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1467-8624 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00093920 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Child Dev Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers
Original Publication: [Chicago, etc.] : Published by the University of Chicago Press for the Society for Research in Child Development [etc.]

Comprehension* ; Language*; Child ; Female ; Humans ; Child, Preschool ; Language Development ; Cues

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.
(© 2023 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

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Date Created: 20230327 Date Completed: 20231102 Latest Revision: 20231107

20240628

10.1111/cdev.13925

36967654