Wilson, E., Cain, K., Davies, C. orcid.org/0000-0001-9347-7905 et al. (4 more authors) (2024) Children’s development of conversational and reading inference skills: a call for a collaborative approach. Language Development Research, 4 (1). pp. 42-79. ISSN 2771-7976
Abstract
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). This work is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work for non-commercial purposes without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified under the terms available via the above link to the Creative Commons website. |
Keywords: | pragmatic development, pragmatic inference, reading comprehension, reading inference |
Dates: |
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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) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 18 Dec 2023 11:44 |
Last Modified: | 05 Feb 2024 15:25 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Carnegie Mellon University Publishing Service |
Identification Number: | 10.34842/89as-7d31 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:206678 |