دانلود رایگان مقاله پردازش آنلاین زبان بچگانه به عنوان انعکاسی از علم و جهل گوینده

Abstract

The current research examined whether young children react to inconsistencies between a speakers’ language and her knowledge or lack of knowledge about reality. Gaze behavior at the speaker was examined during two key frames: prior and post location name. Present findings demonstrate that even before the location name is spoken, the 24-month-olds (N = 122) differentiate between the scenarios in which the speaker is knowledgeable or ignorant about where the object is. Following the location name, infant gaze was largely influenced by the inconsistency of the language. That is, infants looked more at the speaker when she mentioned a location name that was inconsistent with her knowledge or lack of knowledge of the object’s transfer. The current results demonstrate that by two years children have begun to take into account other speakers’ knowledge or ignorance of an event as they process statements about reality.

4. General discussion

The current paradigm introduces a unique way of investigating children’s understanding of other’s knowledge by asking whether language in itself is understood as a reflection of the speaker’s knowledge. The goal of the study specifically wasto examine 24-month-olds’ understanding of the relation between language and mental states, by testing their looking behavior when the speaker was either knowledgeable or ignorant about an object’s final location. To answer this question we examined whether the same spontaneous and implicit reaction to violations occurs when language violates a speaker’s knowledge of reality. Thus, we asked whether children would look longer at a speaker when she makes a statement about an object’s location that is not in concordance with her knowledge or lack of knowledge of the object’s location change and therefore its current location. Unlike previous VoE location change paradigms, which rely on more visually salient behaviors pertaining to a protagonist’s intention to look for an object, the current paradigm relied only on the detection of inconsistency between what the person said and her knowledge of the object’s location change. Given this particular feature of our procedure, we specifically focus on gaze at the speaker, the true source of consistency or violation thereof. Prior research corroborates with the use of looking time at the speaker as the dependent variable, as it was shown that violations through language, such as during false labeling of common objects, resulted in increased looking at the speaker (Koenig & Echols, 2003). Here we examined children’s visual attention at the speaker as the language statement unfolded, which resulted in two key time frames – language statement before and after the location name was spoken. In doing so we asked when during the language statement infants differentiate between conditions – before the location name, based on whether the speaker is knowledgeable or not of the location change, or following the location name, based on whether the speaker’s language matched what the speaker knows or doesn’t know.