Performative Bias in Children's Interpretations of Ambiguous Referential Communications

Abstract

The hypothesis of this study was that young children respond incorrectly in interpreting ambiguous communications in referential tasks because they respond to the illocutionary performative force rather than the locutionary content of the communications. However, these children can evaluate locutionary adequacy when the performative force is deemphasized. In 2 experiments, young children were induced to discriminate between informative and ambiguous communications according to either the performative or locutionary adequacy of the communications. In experiment 1, kindergarten and second-grade children were asked to assign adequate communications to an informative speaker and ambiguous communications to an ambiguous speaker. In experiment 2, kindergarten children were required to choose an object or signal that an object choice was impossible in response to adequate or inadequate communications uttered by a speaker. The results of both experiments showed that correct responses of the kindergarten children to the ambiguous communications improved when they responded to the locutionary rather than the performative force of the communications.