{"id":8866,"date":"2016-05-24T06:13:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T06:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=8866"},"modified":"2016-05-24T06:13:40","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T06:13:40","slug":"why-children-confuse-simple-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/why-children-confuse-simple-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Why children confuse simple words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kids have \u201cand\/or\u201d problem despite sophisticated reasoning.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\u201cChildren<\/a>
\u201cChildren seem to interpret disjunction like conjunction,\u201d observes MIT Linguistics Professor Danny Fox. However, Fox adds, although \u201cit has been claimed children are very different from adults in the interpretation of logical words,\u201d the study\u2019s larger implication is almost the opposite \u2014 namely that \u201cthe child is [otherwise] identical to the adult, but there is a very small parameter that distinguishes them.\u201d
Image: Christine Daniloff\/MIT<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —<\/strong>\u00a0Imagine, for a moment, you are a parent trying to limit how much dessert your sugar-craving young children can eat.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can have cake or ice cream,\u201d you say, confident a clear parental guideline has been laid out.<\/span><\/p>\n

But your children seem to ignore this firm ruling, and insist on having both cake and ice cream. Are they merely rebelling against a parental command? Perhaps. But they might be confusing \u201cor\u201d with \u201cand,\u201d as children do at times, something studies have shown since the 1970s. What seems like a restriction to the parent sounds like an invitation to the child: Have both!<\/span><\/p>\n

But why does this happen? Now a study by MIT linguistics professors and a team from Carleton University, based on an experiment with children between the ages of 3 and 6, proposes a new explanation, with a twist: In examining this apparent flaw, the researchers conclude that children deploy a more sophisticated mode of logical analysis than many experts have previously realized.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, say the linguists, children use almost entirely the same approach as adults when it comes to evaluating potentially ambiguous sentences, by testing and \u201cstrengthening\u201d them into sentences with more precise meanings, when disjunction and conjunction (\u201cor\u201d and \u201cand\u201d) are involved.<\/span><\/p>\n

While using this common approach, however, children do not test how a sentence would change if \u201cand\u201d were directly substituted for \u201cor.\u201d This more modest procedural problem is what leads to the confusion about cake and ice cream.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cChildren seem to interpret disjunction like conjunction,\u201d observes Danny Fox, the Anshen-Chomsky Professor in Language and Thought at MIT and co-author of a paper detailing the study. However, Fox adds, although \u201cit has been claimed children are very different from adults in the interpretation of logical words,\u201d the study\u2019s larger implication is almost the opposite \u2014 namely that \u201cthe child is [otherwise] identical to the adult, but there is a very small parameter that distinguishes them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Quirky as this finding seems, it confirms a specific prediction Fox and some other researchers had made, based on previous studies in formal semantics (the area of linguistics that investigates the logic of natural language use). As such, the study reinforces what we know about the procedures both children and adults deploy in \u201cand\/or\u201d matters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a certain kind of computation we can now say both children and adults do,\u201d says Raj Singh PhD \u201908, an associate professor of cognitive science at Carleton University and the lead author of the new report.<\/span><\/p>\n

The paper, \u201cChildren interpret disjunction as conjunction: Consequences for theories of implicature and child development,\u201d is being published in the journal\u00a0Natural Language Semantics<\/em>. The co-authors are Singh; Fox; Ken Wexler, emeritus professor of psychology and linguistics at MIT; Deepthi Kamawar, an associate professor of psychology at Carleton University; and Andrea Astle-Rahim, a recent PhD graduate from Carleton University.<\/span><\/p>\n

What adults do: the two-step<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

To understand how children conflate \u201cor\u201d with \u201cand,\u201d first consider how adults normally clarify what sentences mean. Suppose you have a dozen cookies in a jar on your desk at work, and go to a meeting. When you come back, a colleague tells you, \u201cMarty ate some of the cookies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now suppose you find out that Marty actually ate all 12 cookies. The previous sentence \u2014 \u201cMarty ate some of the cookies\u201d \u2014 may still be true, but it would be more accurate to say, \u201cMarty ate all of the cookies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To make this evaluation, adults compute \u201cscalar implicatures,\u201d a technical phrase for thinking about the implications of the logical relationship between a sentence and its alternatives. For \u201cMarty ate some of the cookies,\u201d there is a two-step computation. The first step is to think through some alternatives, such as what happens if you substitute \u201call\u201d for \u201csome\u201d (leading to \u201cMarty ate all of the cookies\u201d). The second step is to realize that this alternative spells out a specific new meaning \u2014 that all 12 cookies have been eaten, not just a few of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

We then realize the sentence \u201cMarty ate some of the cookies\u201d more accurately means: \u201cMarty ate some, but not all, of the cookies.\u201d And now we have a \u201cstrengthened\u201d version of the first sentence.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same process applies to the sentence, \u201cJane ate cake or ice cream.\u201d The sentence is true if Jane ate one or the other, and still technically true if she ate both. But once we compute the scalar implicatures, we realize that \u201cJane ate cake or ice cream\u201d is a \u201cstrengthened\u201d way of saying she ate one or the other, but not both. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fox has conducted extensive research over the last decade formalizing our computations of scalar implicatures and identifying areas where tiny differences in the logical \u201cspace of alternatives\u201d can have far-reaching consequences. The current paper stems in part from work Singh pursued as a doctoral student collaborating with Fox at MIT.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why \u201cor\u201d and \u201cand\u201d merge for children<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The research team conducted the study\u2019s experiment by testing 59 English-speaking children and 26 adults in the Ottawa area. The children ranged in age from 3 years, 9 months, to 6 years, 4 months. The linguists gave the subjects a series of statements along with pictures, and asked them to say whether the statements were true or false.<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance: The children were shown a picture with three boys holding an apple or a banana, along with the statement, \u201cEvery boy is holding an apple or a banana,\u201d and then asked to say if the statement was true or false. The children were asked to do this for a full range of scenarios \u2014 such as one boy holding one type of fruit and two boys holding the other \u2014 along with a varying set of \u201cand\/or\u201d statements. The researchers repeated five sets of such trials, with the pictures changing each time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The results suggest that children are computing scalar implicatures when they evaluate the statements \u2014 but they largely do not substitute disjunctions and conjunctions when testing out the possible meaning of sentences, as adults do.<\/span><\/p>\n

That means when children hear \u201ccake or ice cream,\u201d they are generally not replacing \u201cor\u201d in the phrase with \u201cand,\u201d to test what would happen. Without that contrast, the children still \u201cstrengthen\u201d the meaning of \u201cor,\u201d but they strengthen it to mean \u201cand.\u201d Thus \u201cor\u201d and \u201cand\u201d can blur together for children.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey [children] don\u2019t use \u2018cake and ice cream\u2019 as an alternative,\u201d Fox says. \u201cAs a result, \u2018cake or ice cream\u2019 is expected, if we are right about the nature of the computation, to become \u2018cake and ice cream\u2019 for the children.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And while we tend to think children are wrong to draw that conclusion, it is still the result of computing scalar implicatures \u2014 it just happens that, as Singh observes, those computations create divergent outcomes for children and adults.<\/span><\/p>\n

A universal process<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers hope colleagues will consider the additional evidence the study provides about the formal logic underlying our language use.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe computational system of language is actually telling us how to do certain kinds of thinking,\u201d Wexler suggests. \u201cIt isn\u2019t us just trying to [understand] things pragmatically.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, the scholars believe evidence from other languages besides English supports their conclusions. In both Walpiri, a language of indigenous Australians, and American Sign Language, there is a single connective word that functions as both \u201cor\u201d and \u201cand\u201d and appears subject to the strengthening process identified for children. And, Singh notes, linguists are now replicating the study\u2019s findings in French and Japanese.<\/span><\/p>\n

In general, Fox observes, across languages, and for children and adults alike, \u201cThe remarkable logical fact is that when you take \u2018and\u2019 out of the space of alternatives, \u2018or,\u2019 becomes \u2018and.\u2019 This, of course, relies on the nature of the computation that we\u2019ve postulated, and, hence, the results of the study provide confirmation of a form that I find rather exciting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So, yes, your children may not understand what you mean about dessert. Or perhaps they are just being willful. But if they confuse \u201cor\u201d with \u201cand,\u201d then they are not being childish \u2014\u00a0at least not in the way you may think.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cChildren seem to interpret disjunction like conjunction,\u201d observes Danny Fox, the Anshen-Chomsky Professor in Language and Thought at MIT and co-author of a paper detailing the study. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",600,400,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",600,400,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",540,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",639,426,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Language-Acquisition_0.jpg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}