Thought and language: Effects of group‐mindedness on young children's interpretation of exclusive we

Abstract

The current study investigated whether age‐related changes in the conceptualization of social groups influences interpretation of the pronoun we. Sixty‐four 2‐ and 4‐year‐olds (N = 29 female, 50 White‐identifying) viewed scenarios in which it was ambiguous how many puppets performed an activity together. When asked who performed the activity, a speaker puppet responded, “We did!” In one condition, the speaker was near one and distant from another puppet, implying a dyadic interpretation of we. In another condition, the speaker was distant from both, thus pulling for a group interpretation. In the former condition, 2‐ and 4‐year‐olds favored the dyadic interpretation. In the latter condition, only 4‐year‐olds favored the group interpretation. Age‐related conceptual development “expands” the set of conceivable plural person referents.

Effects of group entitativity on young English-speaking children’s interpretation of inclusive We

“…[ 11 ] investigated how 2- and 4-year-olds resolve this pragmatic ambiguity in use of we . Those authors found that 4-year-olds systematically formed dyadic or group interpretations of we , depending on the spatial position of a speaker relative to two other individuals.…”

“…Importantly, 2- and 4-year-olds displayed an adult-like understanding of the first-person semantics of we by reliably including the speaker as one of the individuals referred to by use of we (number was controlled, which precluded investigating children’s understanding of the plural semantics of we ). Consequently, [ 11 ] interpreted this developmental shift in referential interpretation as evidence that a groupminded shift at 3 years expands the set of conceptualizable social entities. Corroboratory results for referential production are reported by [ 12 ].…”

“…However, there was a limitation of the study of [ 11 ]. Participants in that study were excluded from (i.e., were third parties to) the intended referent of we .…”

“…This limitation is important because children may have more experience interpreting we when they are included in the intended referent of we . That is, children may have less experience with the “exclusive we ” used in [ 11 ] than they do with the “inclusive we .” Indeed, the fact that young children hear we infrequently relative to most other pronouns arguably makes this limitation more pressing. For example, [ 12 ] found that we and other first-person plural personal, possessive, and reflexive pronouns constitute about 6% of mothers’ spontaneous pronouns and occur in only about 3% of mothers’ spontaneous utterances.…”

“…Both studies also investigated effects of sex on interpretation of we . Previous studies of pronoun development suggest that males may form group interpretations of we more often than females [ 11 ]. Complete code and data used in the analyses reported in this article are freely available at OSF ( https://osf.io/5cs9p/?view_only=e3c045f73d2b4ef08897b4f4718a9cd0 ).…”