Abstract
Four-year-olds were asked to assess an adult listener's knowledge of the location of a hidden sticker after the listener was provided an ambiguous or unambiguous description of the sticker location. When preschoolers possessed private knowledge about the sticker location, the location they chose indicated that they judged a description to be unambiguous even when the message was ambiguous from the listener's perspective. However, measures of implicit awareness (response latencies and eye movement measures) demonstrated that even when preschoolers had private knowledge about the sticker location, ambiguous messages led to more consideration of an alternative location and longer response latencies than unambiguous messages. The findings demonstrate that children show sensitivity to linguistic ambiguity earlier than previously thought and, further, that they can detect linguistic ambiguity in language directed to others even when their own knowledge clarifies the intended meaning.
Highlights
Language is only one ingredient in linguistic communication
When 4-year-olds possessed privileged contextual knowledge about the location of a hidden sticker, their pointing behaviors indicated that they judged a description of that location to be unambiguous even when the message was ambiguous from the listener’s perspective. The findings from this measure of explicit behavior are consistent with those of previous studies indicating that young children conflate their knowledge with that of the listener when evaluating the clarity of linguistic messages for others
This increased response latency and increased looking to a referential alternative in response to an ambiguous message when compared to an unambiguous message demonstrates that children are sensitive to the knowledge state of the listener and appreciate that the message is ambiguous for this listener, even though the message is not ambiguous to the children themselves
Summary
Language is only one ingredient in linguistic communication. The same words or sentences can be interpreted differently depending on the contextual backdrop against which they are understood. Finding the appropriate balance between what is communicated linguistically versus what can be inferred via nonlinguistic information involves two core processes: information monitoring – tracking whether information is contextual in nature or part of the current conversational record, and monitoring the knowledge state of conversational partners. These processes are interdependent, as illustrated by the fact that speakers must track whether nonlinguistic background knowledge they possess is known to listeners. We examined 4-year-olds’ appreciation of the knowledge shared between speakers and listeners when judging the clarity or ambiguity of linguistic messages for another person
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