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Linguistic Conventionality and the Role of Epistemic Reasoning in Children’s Mutual Exclusivity Inferences by Srinivasan, Mahesh; Foushee, Ruthe; Bartnof, Andrew; Barner, David is a Psychology article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Linguistic Conventionality and the Role of Epistemic Reasoning in Children’s Mutual Exclusivity Inferences about?

To interpret an interlocutor's use of a novel word (e.g., "give me the papaya"), children typically exclude referents that they already have labels for (like an "apple"), and expect the word to refer to something they do not have a label for (like the papaya). The goal of the present studies was to test whether such mutual exclusivity inferences require children to reason about the words their interlocutors know and could have chosen to say: e.g., If she had wanted the "apple" she would have asked for it (since she knows the word "apple"), so she must want the papaya. Across four studies, we document that both children and adults will make mutual exclusivity inferences even when they believe that their interlocutor does not share their knowledge of relevant, alternative words, suggesting that such inferences do not require reasoning about an interlocutor's epistemic states. Instead, our findings suggest that children's own knowledge of an object's label, together with their belief that this is the conventional label for the object in their language, and that this convention applies to their interlocutor, is sufficient to support their mutual exclusivity inferences. Additionally, an

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Author

Srinivasan, Mahesh; Foushee, Ruthe; Bartnof, Andrew; Barner, David

Publisher

Elsevier Science; Elsevier ; Elsevier BV (ISSN 0010-0277)

Published

2019

Language

EN

Field

Psychology (Social Sciences)