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Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations
In this work, we consider a recent proposal that claims that the preferred interpretation of sentences containing definite plural expressions, such as “The boys are building a snowman,” is not determined by semantic composition but is pragmatically derived via an implicature. Plural expressions can...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225266/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34177676 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.556120 |
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author | de Koster, Anna M. B. Hendriks, Petra Spenader, Jennifer K. |
author_facet | de Koster, Anna M. B. Hendriks, Petra Spenader, Jennifer K. |
author_sort | de Koster, Anna M. B. |
collection | PubMed |
description | In this work, we consider a recent proposal that claims that the preferred interpretation of sentences containing definite plural expressions, such as “The boys are building a snowman,” is not determined by semantic composition but is pragmatically derived via an implicature. Plural expressions can express that each member of a group acts individually (distributive interpretation) or that the group acts together (collective interpretation). While adults prefer collective interpretations for sentences that are not explicitly marked for distributivity by the distributive marker each, children do not show this preference. One explanation is that the adult collective preference for definite plurals arises due to a conversational implicature. If implicature calculation requires memory resources, children may fail to calculate the implicature due to memory limitations. This study investigated whether loading Dutch-speaking adults' working memory, using a dual task, would elicit more child-like distributive interpretations, as would be predicted by the implicature account. We found that loading WM in adults did lead to response patterns more similar to children. We discuss whether our results offer a plausible explanation for children's development of an understanding of distributivity and how our results relate to recent debates on the role of cognitive resources in implicature calculation. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8225266 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82252662021-06-25 Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations de Koster, Anna M. B. Hendriks, Petra Spenader, Jennifer K. Front Psychol Psychology In this work, we consider a recent proposal that claims that the preferred interpretation of sentences containing definite plural expressions, such as “The boys are building a snowman,” is not determined by semantic composition but is pragmatically derived via an implicature. Plural expressions can express that each member of a group acts individually (distributive interpretation) or that the group acts together (collective interpretation). While adults prefer collective interpretations for sentences that are not explicitly marked for distributivity by the distributive marker each, children do not show this preference. One explanation is that the adult collective preference for definite plurals arises due to a conversational implicature. If implicature calculation requires memory resources, children may fail to calculate the implicature due to memory limitations. This study investigated whether loading Dutch-speaking adults' working memory, using a dual task, would elicit more child-like distributive interpretations, as would be predicted by the implicature account. We found that loading WM in adults did lead to response patterns more similar to children. We discuss whether our results offer a plausible explanation for children's development of an understanding of distributivity and how our results relate to recent debates on the role of cognitive resources in implicature calculation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8225266/ /pubmed/34177676 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.556120 Text en Copyright © 2021 de Koster, Hendriks and Spenader. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology de Koster, Anna M. B. Hendriks, Petra Spenader, Jennifer K. Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations |
title | Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations |
title_full | Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations |
title_fullStr | Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations |
title_full_unstemmed | Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations |
title_short | Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations |
title_sort | child-like adults: dual-task effects on collective vs. distributive sentence interpretations |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225266/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34177676 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.556120 |
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