Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T11:32:40.716Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Children's strategies for interpreting complex comparative questions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

David J. Townsend  and
Melinda Erb
David J. Townsend
Affiliation:
Montclair State College
Melinda Erb
Affiliation:
Montclair State College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Fifty-four children aged between 3 and 6 were asked questions such as ‘Which box is Xer than it is Z?,’ where Xer was taller, shorter, fatter, or thinner and Z was tall or fat, in the context of five rectangles of varying dimensions. For most questions, the largest rectangle was chosen most often as an answer, regardless of the adjectives used. The older children often chose the Xest rectangle in the array, indicating interpretation of only the first clause of the question. After providing feedback on incorrect answers for the five-year-old children, a post-test showed a decrease in frequency of choices of the largest rectangle, no change in frequency of choices of the Xest rectangle, and, for some questions, an increase in the frequency of choices of the correct rectangle. The results are interpreted to mean that the linguistic strategy of attending to the first clause is more resistant to change than the more primitive non-linguistic preference for choosing the largest object without interpreting the sentence.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , November 1975 , pp. 271 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Amidon, A. & Carey, P. (1972). why five year olds cannot understand before and after. JVLVB II. 417–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bever, T. G. (1970). The comprehension and memory of sentences with temporal relations. In d'Arcais, G. B. Flores & Levelt, W. J. M. (eds), Advances in psycholinguistics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Chipman, H. H. & de Dardel, C. (1974). Developmental study of the comprehension and production of the pronoun ‘it’. JPsychRes 3. 91–101.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1972). Semantics and comprehension. In Sebeok, T. A. (ed.), Current trends in linguistics, 12 (The Hague: Mouton). 1291–1428.Google Scholar
Donaldson, M. & Balfour, G. (1968). Less is more: a study of language comprehension in children. BJPsych 59. 461–71.Google Scholar
Donaldson, M. & Wales, R. J. (1970). On the acquisition of some relational terms. In Hayes, J. R. (ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. P. (1972). The effects of stress on the understanding of pronominal coreference in children. JPsychRes 2. 1–8.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. & Benedict, H. (1974). The comprehension of relative, absolute, and contrastive adjectives by young children. JPsychRes 3. 333–42.Google Scholar
Palermo, D. S. (1973). More about less: A study of comprehension. JVLVB 12. 211–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Townsend, D. J. (1974). Children's comprehension of comparative forms. JExpChPsych 18, 293–303.Google Scholar