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Young children's attributions of knowledge when speaker intent and listener access conflict
Author(s) -
Montgomery Derek E.,
Miller Scott A.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1997.tb00732.x
Subject(s) - psychology , comprehension , attribution , perception , precondition , social psychology , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , linguistics , computer science , philosophy , neuroscience , programming language
Three experiments assessed children's attributions of knowledge to a listener when a speaker's intent for a message to be heard either conflicted or coincided with a listener's perceptual access to the message. When speaker intent and listener access coincided, both 3‐year‐olds and 5‐year‐olds correctly attributed knowledge to the listener. However, performance between the two groups diverged when access and intent conflicted, with only 5‐year‐olds consistently attributing knowledge on the basis of access alone. These results suggest that 3‐year‐olds do not yet fully distinguish the intent to inform from the actual informativeness of a message. For older children, the intent to be heard is secondary to perceptual access in judgments of listener comprehension because listener access to a message is regarded as a necessary precondition for being informed by that message.