Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures
Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures
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DOI：
10.1080/01690960444000250
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发表时间：
2005-10-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Meroni, L
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Guasti, MT;Chierchia, G;Meroni, L
Noveck（2001）认为，即使是11岁的孩子也不能可靠地支持弱标量项（some，might，or）的标量解释。Braine & Rumain，1981; Smith，1980）。然而，最近的研究表明，儿童明显的失败可能取决于实验要求（Papafragou和Musolino，2003）。虽然以前的研究涉及不同年龄的儿童以及不同的任务，因此没有直接的可比性，但一个共同的发现是，儿童似乎并没有得到相同程度的标量含义成人做。本文描述了一系列的实验，进行了意大利语的主题（儿童和成人），主要集中在标量术语一些。我们的目标是仔细检查允许儿童计算含义的特定条件。在这样做的时候，我们证明，7岁的儿童（最小的年龄的儿童谁参加了Noveck研究）能够计算的实验条件下，适当地满足某些上下文的先决条件，推导出这样的含义。我们还提出了进一步的研究结果，在这一领域的研究方法具有普遍的影响。我们的研究表明，某些任务掩盖了儿童对标量术语的理解，不仅包括Noveck使用的任务，而且还包括采用某些明确指令的任务，例如Papafragou和Musolino（2003）使用的训练任务。我们的研究结果进一步表明，虽然明确的培训显然提高了儿童的能力，画的含义，儿童仍然未能达到成人水平的性能，最标量的条款，即使在这样的任务，和指令的效果不持续超出培训会议本身对大多数儿童。本研究的另一个相关发现是，实验背景的一些操作对所有受试者都有影响，而另一些操作只对一部分儿童产生影响。这种个体差异可能在以前的研究中被掩盖了，因为没有报告个体受试者的表现。我们的一般结论是，即使是年幼的儿童（7奥尔兹）的先决条件推导标量含义，虽然这些能力显示只有当会话背景是自然的。
Noveck (2001) argued that children even as old as 11 do not reliably endorse a scalar interpretation of weak scalar terms (some, might, or) (cf. Braine & Rumain, 1981; Smith, 1980). More recent studies suggest, however, that children's apparent failures may depend on the experimental demands (Papafragou & Musolino, 2003). Although previous studies involved children of different ages as well as different tasks, and are thus not directly comparable, nevertheless a common finding is that children do not seem to derive scalar implicatures to the same extent as adults do. The present article describes a series of experiments that were conducted with Italian speaking subjects (children and adults), focusing mainly on the scalar term some. Our goal was to carefully examine the specific conditions that allow the computation of implicatures by children. In so doing, we demonstrate that children as young as 7 (the youngest age of the children who participated in the Noveck study) are able to compute implicatures in experimental conditions that properly satisfy certain contextual prerequisites for deriving such implicatures. We also present further results that have general consequences for the research methodology employed in this area of study. Our research indicates that certain tasks mask children's understanding of scalar terms, not only including the task used by Noveck, but also tasks that employ certain explicit instructions, such as the training task used by Papafragou & Musolino (2003). Our findings indicate further that, although explicit training apparently improves children's ability to draw implicatures, children nevertheless fail to achieve adult levels of performance for most scalar terms even in such tasks, and that the effects of instruction do not last beyond the training session itself for most children. Another relevant finding of the present study is that some of the manipulations of the experimental context have an effect on all subjects, whereas others produce effects on just a subset of children. Individual differences of this kind may have been concealed in previous research because performance by individual subjects was not reported. Our general conclusions are that even young children (7-year olds) have the prerequisites for deriving scalar implicatures, although these abilities are revealed only when the conversational background is natural.