Children's understanding of the relation between expressions (what was said) and intentions (what was meant)

Robinson, Elizabeth; Goelman, Hillel; Olson, David R.

doi:10.1111/j.2044-835x.1983.tb00545.x

Cited by 75 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 6 publications

(9 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The literature on children's understanding of ambiguity highlights changes between around 5 and 8 years in children's acceptance of the possibility of alternative interpretations of limited input (e.g. Beal, 1988;Flavell, Speer, Green & August, 1981;Robinson & Robinson, 1982;Robinson, Goelman & Olson, 1983;Taylor, 1988), and this has been supplemented by more recent studies (Apperly & Robinson, 1998;Beck & Robinson, 2001;Carpendale & Chandler, 1996). Research on children's readiness to make undecidability judgements in reasoning problems gives results consistent with the work on ambiguity (e.g.…”

Section: Epistemic and Physical Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 68%

Children's Sensitivity to Their Own Relative Ignorance: Handling of Possibilities Under Epistemic and Physical Uncertainty

et al. 2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Children were more likely correctly to specify possibilities when uncertainty resided in the physical world, and more likely to guess the outcome when objectively identical uncertainty arose from their own perspective of ignorance (epistemic uncertainty). In Experiment 1, 4-to 6-year-olds more frequently marked both doors from which a block might emerge when the outcome was undetermined, than when the block was hidden behind one door. In Experiment 2 (5-to 6-year-olds) and 3 (5-to 8-yearolds), children more frequently placed food in both possible locations when an imaginary pet was yet to be placed in a box, than when it was hidden in one. Results have implications for interpretive theory of mind and 'curse of knowledge'. Epistemic and physical uncertainty 3Children's Sensitivity to Their Own Relative Ignorance: Handling of Possibilities Under Conditions of Epistemic and Physical UncertaintyAdults' and children's handling or mishandling of uncertainty have long been the focus of research attention. In the adult literature, a number of researchers have made a distinction between uncertainty which arises in the external world (for example about the fall of a die not yet thrown), and uncertainty which resides internally due to ignorance on the part of the observer (for example about the fall of a die which has been thrown but out of the observer's view). The latter is commonly labeled epistemic uncertainty; the former has been given various labels and here we shall use the term physical uncertainty. In the experiments reported here we compare children's handling of these two types of uncertainty and show that, as for adults, the variable is of psychological importance:Exactly the same probability is treated differently when uncertainty is epistemic rather than physical. In our tasks with children, however, the effect operates in the opposite direction from that found in the adult studies, and we speculate why.In what follows we begin by summarizing the published research on children's handling of uncertainty, most of which involves procedures giving rise to epistemic rather than physical uncertainty. Then we show how adults respond differently to the two types of uncertainty in tasks unlike those used with children. Finally we set up our predictions for children's handling of the two types of uncertainty in tasks which derive from the existing developmental literature. Epistemic and physical uncertainty 4Children have a well documented tendency to under-estimate the uncertainty arising from limited information in a wide range of circumstances, to a much greater extent than adults. The literature on children's understanding of ambiguity highlights changes between around 5 and 8 years in children's acceptance of the possibility of alternative interpretations of limited input (e.g. Beal, 1988;Flavell, Speer, Green & August, 1981;Robinson & Robinson, 1982;Robinson, Goelman & Olson, 1983;Taylor, 1988), and this has been supplemented by more recent studies (Apperly & Robinson, 1998;Beck & Robinson, 2001;Carpendale & Chan...

show abstract

Section: Epistemic and Physical Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 68%

Children's Sensitivity to Their Own Relative Ignorance: Handling of Possibilities Under Epistemic and Physical Uncertainty

et al. 2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…That is, they considered what was said and what was meant to be the same utterance. Converging findings were obtained by Robinson, Goelman, and Olson (1983). Similarly, Beal and Belgrad (1990) found that young children who played a communication game evaluated their interpretation of the message, rather than the literal meaning of the message; as long as the children were able to arrive at some interpretation of an ambiguous message, they considered it to be sufficiently clear and specific.…”

Section: Texts As Representations Of Meaningmentioning

confidence: 82%

The role of comprehension monitoring in Children's revision

Beal

1996

Educ Psychol Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Children 4 -5 years of age, for example, make a related error with oral language: Robinson, Goelman, and Olson (1983) found that once children knew which of a set of objects an ambiguous utterance referred to, they tended to accept the suggestion that a disambiguated version of an utterance had actually been given. For example, once they knew that the ambiguous utterance "I've chosen the one man with the red flower" referred to the man with the big, rather than the small, red flower, children were inclined to agree that the speaker had actually said "the man with the big red flower."…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%