Children's use of pragmatic competence as evidence for the reliability of an information source

Abstract

Two aspects of children’s understanding of Gricean maxims were investigated. First, children’s awareness of adherence to the maxims of quality and relation was tested in two separate conditions. Second, children’s use of evidence from maxim adherence as a cue to the reliability of an information source was investigated. Four- and 6-year-olds observed two conversations. In one conversation a Gricean adherer responded appropriately to questions. In the other a Gricean non-adherer gave inappropriate responses by violating a Gricean maxim. Children were asked to assess each person’s utterances individually and then to identify which conversational partner (the adherer or the non-adherer) was better at answering questions. Children who correctly responded to all three questions were considered maxim recognizers. All 6-year-olds were maxim recognizers of quality and relation. Four-year-olds only recognized adherence to the maxim of quality. Children were then presented with contrasting information about a series of word-referent pairs. Each conversational partner endorsed a different object as the referent of a novel name. When asked to select the correct referent, 6-year-olds in both conditions and 4-year-olds in the quality condition chose the object that had been endorsed by the Gricean adherer.These findings indicate that children can, in some circumstances, make judgments about a person’s pragmatic competence by observing them in conversation without directly interacting with them. Furthermore, children can use this information to assess the future reliability of a person as an information source.