Young children's detection of propositional inconsistencies in oral communications

Abstract

Abstract Markman's (1979) research suggests that children up to 12 years of age have difficulty in spontaneously detecting inconsistencies in communications. An experiment was designed to examine the influence of several factors which may affect children's performance. Forty-eight pre-school and first-grade children were asked to judge eight stories told by a puppet. The stories differed in whether they were consistent or inconsistent, long or short and whether the premise upon which a story's consistency depended was implicitly or explicitly stated. In addition, half the children were led to expect that some of the stories would not make sense whereas the remaining children were given no such expectation. The results showed that age and expectation influenced inconsistency detection. A significant interaction between length and premise type indicated that length influenced inconsistency detection when the premises were explicit but not implicit. A significant age × expectation × length interaction reveal...