CAREER: The Origins of Discourse: How Children Develop Communicative Rationality Across Three Diverse Societies

为了成为合理和负责任的社会成员，儿童必须获得公民技能。该提案侧重于一项关键的公民技能：儿童如何学习成为公共话语的熟练和关键贡献者。关于儿童如何获得这些基本技能的研究还很缺乏。理性话语包括两种主要技能：理性回应，即根据他人提供的理由适当地形成、维持或修改自己信念的能力;理性给予，即提供足够理由支持自己主张的能力。该项目旨在提高对这两种社会批判性思维能力发展的基本认识，并揭示儿童在这两种发展过程中的相似性和差异性。该项目致力于发展沟通理性：4至9岁的儿童如何发展基本技能，成为精通公共话语的关键贡献者。使用实验和观察的方法相结合，拟议的研究目标集中在两个关键的心理能力：理性反应和理性给予的发展。此外，这一假设的发展，可以通过一种特定形式的社会语言互动-亲子元对话-进行测试。这项研究通过i）发展一个关于作为一种社会现象的理性的新视角来推进知识（交往理性），并进一步了解其发展; ii）提供第一个系统的测试，如何交往理性可以培养儿童;（三）揭示了文化因素对儿童交往理性发展的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得支持通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。

To become reasonable and responsible members of society, children have to acquire skills of citizenship. This proposal focuses on a key citizenship skill: how children learn to be proficient and critical contributors to public discourse. Research on how children acquire these essential skills is lacking. Rational discourse consists of two main skills: Reason-Responsiveness, the ability to form, maintain, or revise one’s beliefs appropriately in response to reasons provided by others; and Reason-Giving, the ability to provide adequate reasons supporting one’s own claims. The proposed project advances basic knowledge of the development of these two social critical thinking skills and reveals similarities and differences between children in these developmental processes.This project addresses the development of communicative rationality: how children between the ages of 4 and 9 develop fundamental skills to become proficient and critical contributors to public discourse. Using a mix of experimental and observational methods, the proposed research objectives focus on two key sets of psychological capacities: the development of reason-responsiveness and reason-giving. Additionally, the hypothesis that the development of communicative rationality can be fostered through a specific form of socio-linguistic interaction – parent-child metatalk – is tested. This research advances knowledge by i) developing a new perspective on rationality as a social phenomenon (communicative rationality) and further understanding of its development; ii) providing the first systematic test of how communicative rationality can be fostered in children; iii) revealing the influence of cultural factors on children’s developing communicative rationality.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.