Detecting the Ambiguity of Sentences

Abstract

The authors of this article report on a preliminary study of 18, 4-and 5-year-old children, followed by a longitudinal study of 44 children, who were tested in the first, second, and third grades. The children's ability to detect the ambiguity of lexically ambiguous sentences (e.g., "The children saw the bat lying by the fence") and structurally ambiguous sentences (e.g., "The girl tickled the baby with the teddy bear") was assessed in the preliminary study and in Experiments 1 and 2, which were conducted when the children were in the first and second grades, respectively. Ambiguity detection skill was found to be related to first-grade reading readiness and to second-and third-grade reading achievement. The results suggest that the detection of lexical ambiguity develops in first grade, correlates highly with reading readiness measures, and is a strong predictor of secondgrade reading ability, indicating that it is a precursor of reading skill. In this study, the ability to detect structural ambiguity emerged in second grade and was a predictor of third-grade reading ability. Clinical implications for the use of ambiguity detection tasks to identify children who are at risk for reading difficulty are discussed.The acquisition of metalinguistic skills in middle to late childhood has long been an important area of research in typical first-language development. Initially, this interest was motivated by the fact that metalinguistic development involves an intersection of linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive systems.

Using Semantic Ambiguity Instruction to Improve Third Graders' Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Comprehension: An Experimental Study

“…The former meaning is reflected in an underlying structure in which the "bear" is used as an instrument by "the girl," the latter in a structure in which the "bear" is possessed by "the baby" (Cairns, 1999). Cairns et al (2004) demonstrated that 4-and 5-yearold children failed to report both kinds of ambiguity. First graders could not perceive and report structural ambiguities, but they were able to detect some lexical ambiguities.…”

“…Greater facility with self-monitoring in turn serves to boost their reading comprehension. Cairns, Waltzman, and Schlisselberg (2004) investigated the development of the metalinguistic skill of ambiguity detection and its relation to reading in the early school years. Two of the basic hallmarks of metalinguistic skill are the ability to attend simultaneously to the form and content of language and the ability to think and talk about language as an object rather than simply as a means of communication (Hakes, 1980;van Kleeck & Reddick, 1982).…”

“…The perception that a single sentence form can have dual content demonstrates the first hallmark, and the ability to talk about the sentence and its two meanings demonstrates the second. Cairns et al (2004) tested children on their ability to report the ambiguity of sentences whose ambiguity rested on the dual meanings of a homonym, like the "nails" sentence above (lexically ambiguous sentences), and also on their ability to detect structurally ambiguous sentences. The latter are sentences without ambiguous words, whose dual meaning derives from the fact that they have two possible structural organizations.…”

“…By second grade, the same children demonstrated an ability to detect structural ambiguities, and both detection scores were significant predictors of their third-grade reading scores. Cairns et al (2004) suggested two explanations for the relationship between ambiguity-detection skill and reading ability. One relates to the metalinguistic skill required to perform the detection tasks, the other to the operation of psycholinguistic processes.…”

“…One limitation of the Cairns et al (2004) study of ambiguity detection with children is that the findings were correlational. To determine whether ambiguity detection directly contributes to reading ability, an experiment is required.…”