Faculty Publications

Interpreting and Responding to Spoken Language: Children's Recognition and Use of a Speaker's Goal

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Journal of Child Language

Volume

19

Issue

3

First Page

677

Last Page

693

Abstract

This study had two purposes. The first was to examine age differences in the extent to which children infer and use a speaker's interpersonal goal to understand speech acts. To this end, the subjects responded to Do you have requests in a role-playing task. The goal behind such a request is implicit in the speaker's choice of noun phrase. We sought to determine whether children, like adults, use the noun phrase to infer the speaker's goal and thereby decide whether the request is a yes—no question or a directive. The second purpose was to examine age differences in the extent to which children select responses that carry implications appropriate to the speaker's interpersonal goal. To do this, Do you have requests containing general category labels were addressed to the children when they possessed all the category exemplars and when they possessed only a few exemplars. A simple yes implies that the listener has nearly all exemplars and, therefore, is inappropriate for the speaker's goal in the latter situation. The subjects were six-, seven-, nine-, and eleven-year-olds and adults, with 12 subjects per age. Only the eleven-year-olds and the adults used the speaker's noun phrase and considered the implications of yes. © 1992, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.

Department

Department of Educational Psychology, Foundations, and Leadership Studies

Original Publication Date

1-1-1992

DOI of published version

10.1017/S0305000900011624

Link to Full Text

Comments?

Share

COinS