Scalar implicatures and sharing in children
Supervisor:
NausicaaPouscoulous()
This is a project run in collaboration with Keith Jensen and Elena Lieven from the University of Manchester.
Summary:
Language can play a subtle, but crucial role in important social behaviours such as sharing. In communication, hearers make interpretations based on the likely or intended meaning of the speaker. For instance, “Anna ate some biscuits” implies that Anna did not eat all of them. Four- to 5-year-olds, however, often interpret “some” as compatible with “all” (though see Pouscoulous et al., 2007).
Around this age, children show a shift in distributive justice. Three-year-olds are more selfish when asked to distribute “some” resources than five-year-olds (e.g., Rochat et al., 2009). Since children do not necessarily interpret “some” in the same way as adults, it is possible that their sharing behaviour is influenced by this term.
The direction of the verbs “give” and “keep” might also influence sharing, with the former placing emphasis on another individual and the latter being more self-regarding. To date, sharing studies with requests ask children to give, not to keep or take (e.g., Brownell et al., 2009).
To determine whether 3-to-6-year-olds interpret “some” differently depending on whether they or another individual are affected, and whether “giving” is interpreted as more other-regarding than “keeping”, children will be asked to either “give some of” an odd number of stickers to another a puppet or to “keep some of” them for themselves when sharing. The amount of stickers children give to the puppet reflects their sense of fairness.
Metaphor comprehension in Autism Spectrum Disorder & Down syndrome
Supervisors: NausicaaPouscoulous ()
Alex Perovic ()
Summary:
Comprehension of figurative language requires both linguistic and non-linguistic skills. It is documented to be fairly poor in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but suspected to be unproblematic in Down syndrome (DS). This study is the first to investigate comprehension of novel (rather than previously researched conventional) metaphors in these populations, thereby providing a more detailed picture of their pragmatic competence relative to their general linguistic and cognitive abilities. To determine where the difficulties arise - insufficient vocabulary knowledge, incapacity to take into account the context or interference of the literal meaning - we will use two methods recently developed for very young typical children, which minimise the cognitive demands involved in the process of metaphor comprehension, while still being suitable to populations with compromised intellectual and linguistic aptitudes such as ASD and DS.
This project has already been approved by the ethics committee.
Student who wish to work with typically developing children, ASD children or children with Down syndrome can contact us.
This project involves working with young children so students are interested should apply for an enhanced CRB check.