Children's use of contextual cues to resolve referential ambiguity: An application of Relevance Theory
Children's use of contextual cues to resolve referential ambiguity: An application of Relevance Theory
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儿童利用上下文线索来解决指称歧义：相关性理论的应用
DOI：
10.1075/pc.6.1-2.14bez
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发表时间：
1998
影响因子：
0.4
通讯作者：
Mary Sue Sroda
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Bezuidenhout;Mary Sue Sroda
对儿童心理理解感兴趣的研究人员声称，赋予信念和意图的能力是一种后期发展，发生在儿童学会说话和理解他人言语之后。另一方面，有令人信服的论据表明，言语交流需要归因信念和意图的能力。因此，如果人们接受关于儿童心理理解的研究结果，就应该预测幼儿在言语交流方面将存在严重困难。相反，如果这一预测失败，就会让人对幼儿缺乏元表征技能的说法产生怀疑。利用相关性理论的见解，设计了一项实验来测试儿童在说话者的言语无法确定所指对象的情况下恢复说话者预期所指对象的能力。结果表明，在类似情况下，儿童的技能与未经训练的成年人相当。因此，这项研究间接对幼儿缺乏元表征技能的说法提出了质疑。
Researchers interested in children's understanding of mind have claimed that the ability to ascribe beliefs and intentions is a late development, occurring well after children have learned to speak and comprehend the speech of others. On the other hand, there are convincing arguments to show that verbal communication requires the ability to attribute beliefs and intentions. Hence if one accepts the findings from research into children's understanding of mind, one should predict that young children will have severe difficulties in verbal communication. Conversely, if this prediction fails, this casts doubt on the claim that young children lack meta-representational skills. Using insights from Relevance Theory, an experiment was designed to test children's ability to recover a speaker's intended referent in situations in which the speaker's words underdetermine the referent. Results suggest that children's skills are comparable to those of untutored adults in similar situations. Thus this study indirectly casts doubt on the claim that young children lack meta-representational skills.