Children's and Adults' Use of Conversation Cues When Selecting Sources of Information

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Title:	Children's and Adults' Use of Conversation Cues When Selecting Sources of Information
Author:	DeLisle, Sarah S.
Abstract:	Word learning may be best characterized by the ability to recruit information from social others. One question, then, is how children decide to learn words from one person versus another. The present study investigates the possibility that children use a speaker's ability to follow conversational norms when deciding whether to receive information about object labels. In particular, we investigated whether adults and four-year-olds are sensitive to violations of the Gricean maxims of quality and relation. Adults revealed sensitivity to violations of each maxim and used this to select from whom they received information. Four-year-olds were not sensitive to these violations. Future studies might pinpoint why children were unsuccessful in using the violations to decide whether to learn words from someone.
Subject:	Word learning; Gricean maxims; information sources
LCSH Subject:	Language acquisition Developmental psychology Speech errors Conversation Children -- Language
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/1803/2954
Date:	2009

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Use of Conversation Cues When Selecting Information Sources.doc	167.9Kb	Microsoft Word	View/Open