Acquiring the semantics and pragmatics of attitude verbs

这个项目调查了孩子们如何学习描述心理状态的动词的含义，如“想”或“想要”。这类动词之所以重要，有几个原因：首先，不像“跑”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孩子们了解他人思想的一扇窗户。孩子们在理解动词如“think”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（如信念）归因于他人（所谓的“心理理论”）。然而，我们对儿童心理动词在不同发展阶段的语言表征缺乏重要的了解。然而，在语言和心理理论之间的因果关系被提出之前，这样的理解是至关重要的。有几个因素可能是造成儿童语言错误的原因。特别是，我们探讨的假设，这些动词的困难，儿童的经验，既不是概念，也不是语法的性质，但来自掌握这些动词是如何在对话中使用。本研究的中心目标之一是开发工具，以确定是否成功或失败的一些语言任务是由语法知识或推理与使用这些知识。因此，这项研究将对语言延迟，语言和认知障碍，如自闭症有明确的意义。此外，该项目将为研究生和本科生提供资金和研究经验。从事该项目的研究生将担任本科生的近同伴导师。这种安排为研究生提供了指导经验，更好地为他们的研究职位做好准备，并提供了一个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.