Children’s development of conversational and reading inference skills: a call for a collaborative approach

In this perspectives article, we call for a collaborative approach to research on children’s development of conversational inferences and of reading inferences. Despite the clear commonalities in their focus, the two rich research traditions have remained almost entirely separate, primarily within the fields of Developmental Psychology and Experimental Pragmatics, on the one hand, and Cognitive, Developmental and Educational Psychology on the other. We briefly survey research on conversational and reading inferences, and show how both similarities and differences in theoretical approach, methodologies and findings raise significant questions, including: What effect does both context (conversation or reading) and modality (oral, visual, written) have on the need for children to make inferences, and for the opportunities for them to learn to do so? And how do linguistic and background knowledge, sociocognitive and environmental factors support different inferences across contexts and modalities? We propose that a collaborative agenda is crucial, in which interdisciplinary researchers develop theoretical models of how different types of inference cluster together and are supported or affected by the context, modality, andother linguistic, sociocognitive and environmental factors. And they must also develop methodologies which enable reliable and valid measures of inferencing ability that can capture quantitative and qualitative changes across development. Ultimately this will contribute to better understanding of children’s pragmatic development as well as teaching and intervention practices in communication and reading comprehension.