Academic Paper |
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| Title: | Four- and six-year-olds use pragmatic competence to guide word learning |
| Author: | Maria D Vázquez |
| Homepage: | http://www.vanderbilt.edu/psychological_sciences/bio/maria-vazquez |
| Institution: | Vanderbilt University |
| Author: | Sarah S. Delisle |
| Institution: | Vanderbilt University |
| Author: | Megan M. Saylor |
| Institution: | Vanderbilt University |
| Linguistic Field: | Language Acquisition; Pragmatics |
| Abstract: | The present study investigates whether four- and six-year-old children use pragmatic competence as a criterion for learning from someone else. Specifically, we ask whether children use others' adherence to Gricean maxims to determine whether they will offer valid labels for novel objects. Six-year-olds recognized adherence to the maxims of quality and relation and subsequently trusted the labels provided by a maxim adherer. Four-year-olds displayed this pattern when judging adherence to quality but not relation. A linear regression revealed that children's ability to identify maxim adherers predicted their ability to choose the correct object during word-learning trials. This research demonstrates that children use others' pragmatic history when judging the reliability of the information they offer. |
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This article appears in Journal of Child Language Vol. 40, Issue 2, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
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