Young children's communication has often been characterized as egocentric. Some researchers claim that the processing of language involves an initial stage that relies on egocentric heuristics, even in adults. Such an account, combined with general developmental difficulties with late-stage processes, could provide an explanation for much of children's egocentric communication. However, the experimental data reported in this article do not support such an account: In an elicited-production task, 5- to 6-year-old children were found to be sensitive to their partner's perspective. Moreover, in an on-line comprehension task, they showed sensitivity to common-ground information from the initial stages of language processing. We propose that mutual knowledge is not distinct from other knowledge relevant for language processing, and exerts early effects on processing in proportion to its salience and reliability.

Evidence of Perspective-Taking Constraints in Children's On-Line Reference Resolution

This study examines referent introductions in narratives produced by French children of 6, 9, and 11 years in two situations where they either could or could not assume mutual knowledge. In one sit...

French children's ability to introduce referents in narratives as a function of mutual knowledge:

Revision is a critically important component of the writing process, yet much research indicates that young children are often reluctant to revise unless provided with strong adult encouragement and support. Children's limited comprehension monitoring ability may contribute to their difficulty with revision. Children in the early elementary school years have been found to systematically overestimate the clarity of text, and therefore they often fail to identify potential comprehension problems that might be experienced by a naive reader. Conversely, accurate assessment of text comprehensibility has been shown to lead to successful revisions by both older and younger children. Recent studies indicate that training in comprehension monitoring strategies in turn yields benefits for children's revision.

The Role of Comprehension Monitoring in Children's Revision

The present study investigated the influence of the source of information on high-school students' identification of contradictions within online science texts. A pilot study with N?=?92 high-school students showed that their expectations regarding the quality of an online text differed significantly depending on the type of the source (i.e., on the authoritativeness of the website and the author's expertise). In the main study N?=?161 high-school students read a science text that contained four text-internal contradictions and that varied regarding the authoritativeness of the website on which the text was presented (authoritative vs. non-authoritative website) and the author of the text (expert vs. layperson). After reading, a Conflict Verification Task (CVT) was applied to measure students' identification of the conflicting information. The results indicate that students' identification of contradictions differs as a function of website authoritativeness and author expertise. Both in a text stemming from an unambiguously authoritative source ("expert author/authoritative website") and in a text stemming from an unambiguously non-authoritative source ("lay author/non-authoritative website") students identified more contradictions than in a text stemming from a source whose authoritativeness is ambiguous ("lay author/authoritative website" or "expert author/non-authoritative website"). Students' identification of contradictions in an online science text was examined.Influence of source type (type of website and author) of the text was examined.Source type influenced students' quality expectations of online texts.Source type influenced students' identification of contradictions.

Reading science texts online

The goal of this research was to compare various indices of problem detection in children's comprehension monitoring of science passages. Three experiments were conducted with third and fifth grade students who were asked to review paragraph descriptions of unusual plants and report difficulties in understanding the material. Half of the paragraphs contained contradictory information concerning familiar and unusual plants, whereas the apparent inconsistencies were explained in the remaining paragraphs. Children were asked to report their comprehension problems (Experiments 1-3), and to suggest additional information to include or remove to improve the comprehensibility of the paragraphs (Experiments 1 and 2). Measures of children's reading behaviour were also collected (Experiment 3). The results showed that although there was some evidence that children discriminated between the clear and inconsistent paragraphs, in general, children significantly overestimated how well they understood the new information about the unusual plants.

Children's recognition of inconsistencies in science texts: Multiple measures of comprehension monitoring

Two studies were conducted to examine the effect of children's social cognitions on their ability to monitor their comprehension in the referential communication paradigm. Specifically, it was hypo thesized that children's beliefs about the intentions and cooperative- ness of speakers prevent them from accurately evaluating messages. In Experiment 1, it was found that children who were made aware of the possibility that speakers themselves (rather than simply their words) might refer to more than one referent, were significantly better able to detect referential ambiguity than were children who, as in traditional referential communication studies, assumed that speakers attempted to describe a single referent. In Experiment 2, it was found that children faced with potentially uncooperative or dishonest speakers, carefully examined the words of referential directions and therefore detected more problems with those directions than children faced with honest, if potentially incompetent speakers. The results a...

Stephanie Godshall

Papers

The role of social cognition in comprehension monitoring