Acquiring the semantics and pragmatics of attitude verbs

这个项目调查了孩子们是如何学习描述心理状态的动词的含义的，比如“思考”或“想要”。这些动词之所以重要，有以下几个原因：首先，不像“run”这样的动作动词，它们描述的是不容易观察到的内部状态。其次，这些动词经常被用作儿童了解他人思想的窗口。孩子们在理解像“think”这样的动词时似乎总是犯错误。这通常被认为反映了最初无法将精神状态（如信仰）归因于他人（所谓的“心理理论”）。然而，我们对儿童在不同发展阶段对心理动词的语言表征的理解在许多重要方面是缺乏的。然而，在对语言和心智理论之间的联系提出因果关系主张之前，这样的理解是至关重要的。有几个因素可能导致儿童的语言错误。特别是，我们探讨了这样一个假设，即儿童在使用这些动词时遇到的困难既不是概念上的，也不是语法上的，而是源于掌握这些动词在对话中的使用方式。本研究的中心目标之一是开发工具，以确定某些语言任务的成功或失败是由语法知识还是与使用这些知识相关的推理驱动的。因此，这项研究将对语言延迟，语言和认知障碍，如自闭症有明确的启示。此外，该项目将为研究生和本科生提供资金和研究经验。参与该项目的研究生将作为本科生的导师。这种安排为研究生提供了指导经验，更好地为他们的研究岗位做准备，并提供了一种超越个人研究的研究生培训模式。

This project investigates how children come to learn the meaning of verbs that describe mental states such a "think" or "want". Such verbs are important for several reasons: first, unlike action verbs like "run," they describe internal states that are not easily observable. Second, such verbs have often been used as a window into children's understanding of other people's minds. Children seem to make consistent mistakes in their understanding of verbs like "think". This is often taken to reflect an initial inability to attribute mental states (such as beliefs) to others (so-called 'theory of mind'). However, our understanding of children's linguistic representation of mental verbs at various stages of development is lacking in important ways. Yet, such an understanding is crucial before causal claims can be made about the connection between language and theory of mind. Several factors could be responsible for children's linguistic mistakes. In particular, we explore the hypothesis that the difficulty children experience with these verbs is neither conceptual, nor grammatical in nature, but derives from mastering how these verbs are used in conversation. One of the central aims of this research is to develop tools for determining whether success or failure in some linguistic task is driven by grammatical knowledge or the reasoning associated with using this knowledge. Consequently, this research will have clear implications for language delay, and disorders of language and cognition, such as Autism. In addition, this project will provide funding and research experience to graduate and undergraduate students. Graduate students working on the project will serve as near-peer mentors to the undergraduate students. This arrangement provides graduate students with mentoring experience, better preparing them for research positions, and providing a model for graduate training beyond individual research.