Abstract:Understanding symbols requires going beyond what they literally are, and figuring out what they're intended to communicate. For example, a drawing of a bird (or the word bird) could refer to a particular bird, a species, etc. . . The interpreter must decide between these intended meanings. We ask how children go beyond the literal meanings of communicative acts (i.e., compute pragmatic inferences), and whether these inferences are domain-general. We tested 443 US 2-to 6-year-olds' inferences about the referent… Show more
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