Participants in DEVCOM and Creativity and Convention in Pragmatic Development explain what they are investigating and what experiments they are going to carry out. There will be four short talks.
Brief overviews of the talks:
Rebecca Kvisler Iversen: I will present a study that explores the hypothesis that children’s developing awareness of the sense conventions in their linguistic environment in part underlie their preference for literal interpretations of ironical utterances before the age of six.
Claire Prendergast: Does strict adherence to sense conventions affect how 4-year-olds but not 3-year-olds comprehend figurative and literal noun-noun compounds?
I will present some research investigating social and priming effects in how 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds handle conventional and non-conventional literal and figurative noun-noun compounds during an image selection task. The experiment tests for a possible effect of social influence on choice of visual referent as well as the effect that priming component parts of the noun-noun compounds may have on gaze behaviour at test.
Camilo Rodriguez Ronderos: Some adjectives, such ‘straight’ seem to have a precise meaning in the absence of context (perfectly straight), but nevertheless allow for imprecise interpretations (e.g, ‘straight enough’) in certain contexts. In two experiments, we investigated how this pragmatic adjustment translates to effort during comprehension, and how both the interpretation and effort are mediated by contextual factors.
Kristen Frances Schroeder: I will be presenting two studies which explore novel metonymy comprehension among children with and without autism spectrum conditions.
There will be a sequel (or sequels) next term when we have some experimental results to share with you.