NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Showing all 5 results Save | Export
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Long, Madeleine; Shukla, Vishakha; Rubio-Fernandez, Paula – Child Development, 2021
Similes require two different pragmatic skills: appreciating the intended similarity and deriving a scalar implicature (e.g., "Lucy is like a parrot" normally implies that Lucy is not a parrot), but previous studies overlooked this second skill. In Experiment 1, preschoolers (N = 48; ages 3-5) understood "X is like a Y" as an…
Descriptors: Figurative Language, Pragmatics, Preschool Children, Child Language
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Starr, Ariel; Cirolia, Alagia J.; Tillman, Katharine A.; Srinivasan, Mahesh – Child Development, 2021
Why are spatial metaphors, like the use of "high" to describe a musical pitch, so common? This study tested one hundred and fifty-four 3- to 5-year-old English-learning children on their ability to learn a novel adjective in the domain of space or pitch and to extend this adjective to the untrained dimension. Children were more…
Descriptors: Figurative Language, Language Acquisition, Vocabulary Development, Music
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Filippova, Eva; Astington, Janet Wilde – Child Development, 2010
To bridge the social-reasoning focus of developmental research on irony understanding and the pragmatic focus of research with adult populations, this cross-sectional study examines 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (n = 72) developing understanding of both social-cognitive and social-communicative aspects of discourse irony, when compared with adults (n =…
Descriptors: Figurative Language, Theory Practice Relationship, Social Cognition, Interpersonal Competence
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Filippova, Eva; Astington, Janet Wilde – Child Development, 2008
This study describes the development of social reasoning in school-age children. An irony task is used to assess 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (N = 72) and adults' (N = 24) recursive understanding of others' minds. Guttman scale analysis demonstrates that in order to understand a speaker's communicative intention, a child needs to recognize the…
Descriptors: Figurative Language, Language Aptitude, Cognitive Development, Social Cognition
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Ganea, Patricia A.; Saylor, Megan M. – Child Development, 2007
Do infants use past linguistic information to interpret an ambiguous request for an object? When infants in this research were shown 2 objects, and asked for 1 with an indefinite request (e.g., "Can you get it for me?"), both 15- and 18-month-olds used the speaker's previous reference to an absent object to interpret the request. The 18-month-olds…
Descriptors: Linguistics, Infants, Interpretive Skills, Figurative Language