The Development of Comprehension Monitoring and Knowledge about Communication

Memory Development Between 2 and 20

“…A likely possibility is that monitoring occurs and directs rereading, butthat children cannot articulate the errors that they have detected. This speculation is supported by reports that young children manifest nonverbal signs of error detection (e.g., they Iook perplexed) weil before they can verbally report errors (e.g., Beal & Flavell, 1982;Flavell et al, 1981;Patterson, Cosgrove, & O'Brien, 1982). Regardless of the exact explanation of the Iow interrelations obtained by Zabruck:y and Ratner (1986), what is more striking isthat even their grade-6 subjects often failed to report errors, often failed to reread when they should have, and almost never made bridging inferences to try to reconcile discrepancies.…”

“…In cantrast to metacognitively mature adults (and many adults do not qualify; see Chapter 7) who possess proficient executive capabilities, children do not monitor weil and often fail to make appropriate executive decisions. For instance, children often do not monitor comprehension problems when reading text (e.g., Baker & Brown, 1984;Garner, 1987;Körkel, 1987), and they fail to recognize when they do not have enough information to complete a task (e.g., Beal & Flavell, 1982;Flavell, Speer, Green, & August, 1981). (More discussion of children's monitaring deficiencies is presented in Chapter 7.…”

Can one written word mean many things? Prereaders’ assumptions about the stability of written words’ meanings

“…Many 3-year-olds judge as if they believe that the representation (out of sight) has physically changed to stay in match with its real referent. By 4 to 5 years of age few children make this error.Later still, by the age of around 6 to 7 years, children can evaluate as inadequate utterances which under-specify their intended referents (Flavell, Speer, Green & August, 1981;Robinson & Robinson, 1982;Apperly & Robinson, 1998) Furthermore, because written words have conventional generic meaning, we might find theoretically interesting differences in the developmental course of children's mastery of this form of representation in comparison with the others summarized above.In the hiding tasks mentioned children use a picture of a particular room; in standard false picture tasks the picture represents a particular aspect of the world; in tasks involving ambiguous utterances the speaker refers to a specific referent from a set. In contrast, although the written word 'pig' can be used to refer to a particular pig, it also refers generically to all pigs whether or not an appropriate referent is in the vicinity.…”

“…Later still, by the age of around 6 to 7 years, children can evaluate as inadequate utterances which under-specify their intended referents (Flavell, Speer, Green & August, 1981;Robinson & Robinson, 1982;Apperly & Robinson, 1998) Furthermore, because written words have conventional generic meaning, we might find theoretically interesting differences in the developmental course of children's mastery of this form of representation in comparison with the others summarized above.…”

7. Reference and Informativeness as cognitive processes in verbal communication

“…Beyond the scope of this chapter is the large literature on the development of reference which lends useful insights from children's use of overspecified reference to the current debate (e.g., Flavell et al 1981;Dickson 1982;Sonnenschein & Whitehurst 1984;Revelle et al 1985;Lloyd, Mann & Peers 1998;Matthews et al 2006Matthews et al , 2007Huang & Snedeker 2008;Davies & Katsos 2010;Nilsen & Graham 2012;Bannard, Klinger & Tomasello 2013;Morisseau, Davies & Matthews 2013). We expect that future endeavours will continue in tandem with these areas.…”