Intentions Of Characters Research Articles

Reason Inferences in the Story Comprehension of Children and Adults

ACKERMAN, BRIAN P. Reason Inferences in the Story Comprehension of Children and Adults. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1988, 59, 1426-1442. Developmental differences in making and modifying reason inferences were examined in 4 experiments. First (6-year-olds) and fourth graders (9-yearolds) and adults listened to stories containing a sentence describing a character's intent in initiating an event sequence, followed by an unexpected and inconsistent Various sorts of contextual information was provided in the stories that progressively invited either a reason inference or a rejection of the premise (i.e., disavowing the character's intent) as an explanation of the outcome. The contextual information included manipulations of clues about the reason, story titles, different kinds of premise information, and resolution information that confirmed or disconfirmed the reason inference. The results showed that the children seemed able to integrate the multiple sources of information but were more dependent on clue support and generally less likely to make the reason inferences than the adults. In contrast, the children were more likely than the adults to reject the premise as an explanation of the outcome. In addition, only the fourth graders and adults modified their inferences in response to resolution information.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN'S JUDGMENT OF INTENT

HEBBLE, PETER W. The Development of Elementary School Children's Judgment of Intent. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1971, 42, 1203-1215. A ratingscale instrument derived from the Piaget (1932) story pair method and the Breznitz and Kugelmass (1967) intentionality questionnaire was devised to clarify the relationship between children's judgments of naughtiness of a story character and the story's description of the character's intent and the consequences of his behavior. Each of 7 stories was varied in 4 ways corresponding to the combinations of 2 intent levels and 2 consequence levels. Children as young as 6 yielded reliable ratings. An intent judgment quotient (IJQ) indicated the relative emphasis which each S placed on intent and consequences when judging. Decreases in naughtiness ratings of story variations involving good intent seemed to be a factor involved in the age-related increase in intent-based judgment which Piaget and others had noted previously.