Davies, C orcid.org/0000-0001-9347-7905, Lingwood, J, Ivanova, B et al. (1 more author) (2021) Three-year-olds’ comprehension of contrastive and descriptive adjectives: Evidence for contrastive inference. Cognition, 212. 104707. ISSN 0010-0277
Abstract
Combining information from adjectives with the nouns they modify is essential for comprehension. Previous research suggests that preschoolers do not always integrate adjectives and nouns, and may instead over-rely on noun information when processing referring expressions (Fernald, Thorpe, & Marchman, 2010; Thorpe, Baumgartner, & Fernald, 2006). This disjointed processing has implications for pragmatics, apparently preventing under-fives from making contrastive inferences (Huang & Snedeker, 2013).
Using a novel experimental design that allows preschoolers time to demonstrate their abilities in adjective-noun integration and in contrastive inference, two visual world experiments investigate how English-speaking three-year-olds (N = 73, Mage = 44 months) process size adjectives across syntactic (prenominal; postnominal) and pragmatic (descriptive; contrastive) contexts.
We show that preschoolers are able to integrate adjectives and nouns to resolve reference accurately by the end of the referring expression, in a variety of pragmatic and syntactic contexts and in the presence of multiple distractors. We reveal for the first time that they can contrastively infer, given a slowed speed of presentation and visually salient size contrasts. Our findings provide evidence for a continuity in the development of pragmatic skills, which do not appear to be linked to children's language proficiency or speed of processing.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This is an author produced version of an article published in Cognition. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Language development; Developmental pragmatics; Contrastive inference; Adjectives; Eye tracking |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > Linguistics & Phonetics (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) ES/P010296/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Apr 2021 13:46 |
Last Modified: | 03 May 2022 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104707 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:172758 |
Download
Filename: DaviesLingwoodIvanovaArunachalam_CognitionAAM_Mar2021 (1).pdf
Licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0