The role of social cognition in comprehension monitoring

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to examine the effect of children's social cognitions on their ability to monitor their comprehension in the referential communication paradigm. Specifically, it was hypo thesized that children's beliefs about the intentions and cooperative- ness of speakers prevent them from accurately evaluating messages. In Experiment 1, it was found that children who were made aware of the possibility that speakers themselves (rather than simply their words) might refer to more than one referent, were significantly better able to detect referential ambiguity than were children who, as in traditional referential communication studies, assumed that speakers attempted to describe a single referent. In Experiment 2, it was found that children faced with potentially uncooperative or dishonest speakers, carefully examined the words of referential directions and therefore detected more problems with those directions than children faced with honest, if potentially incompetent speakers. The results are discussed in terms of the interaction between the social and linguistic aspects of communication.