Four experiments examined the prominence of place and action representation in the story representations of second-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children and college students. Results suggested that place inconsistency is more important than action inconsistency in children's judgments of story adequacy except when the action involves the story theme.…

Responds to criticisms of the author's study concerning children's interpretations of ambiguous referential communications. (HOD)

Children and adults listened to stories containing an early goal sentence and a later inconsistent outcome. Later object inferences varied with context sentence and title for all ages. Results established that the effects involved maintenance of concept accessibility and that early concept prominence was critical. (BC)

Children often confuse what is said and what is meant in referential communication. Four experiments sought to determine exactly what is confused by children through the use of stories containing informative, contextually informative, and ambiguous utterances. Children tended to be insensitive to utterance ambiguity, not understanding the variable…

Five experiments examined the extent and nature of the referential source errors of 5- to 10-year-old children who listened to stories containing a referential utterance. The results supported five conclusions about children's confusion of different sources of information in referential communication. (SW)

Tested first, second, and fourth graders for understanding of private keys, that is, referential utterances used to inform selectively. Examined children's sensitivity to common ground context of utterance and appreciation of audience design and speaker intent. Found gradual development of understanding over age range. (BC)

Examines first- and third-grade children and college adults' ability to make excuse inferences about a speaker's use of an utterance and to modify those inferences appropriately upon receiving later information. Possible reasons for children's inflexibility were examined by varying the difficulty of relating the excuse interpretation and…

Investigates whether 7- and 10-year-old children and adults are sensitive to their own and another listener's failure to understand literal and nonliteral (sarcastic) uses of utterances. (HOD)