Descripción del proyecto
Estudiar cómo los niños hacen frente a los usos no literales del lenguaje
La expresión y comprensión de las intenciones comunicativas, conocidas como habilidades pragmáticas, subyacen al uso y la comprensión del lenguaje y se desarrollan de forma temprana. Los niños pequeños usan el lenguaje de manera creativa para expresarse, lograr sus objetivos y comprender las intenciones de los demás. Con todo, al mismo tiempo, pueden mostrar dificultades en la comprensión de los usos del lenguaje no literal de los demás. El proyecto DEVCOM, financiado con fondos europeos, tiene como objetivo comprender cómo se desarrollan las capacidades comunicativas de los niños, sus etapas y cómo el razonamiento pragmático de los niños con usos no literales se ve influido por su aprendizaje del significado convencional de las palabras. Se utilizarán metodologías innovadoras, que combinen medidas explícitas e implícitas, para poner de relieve lo que ayuda u obstaculiza a los niños en su uso y comprensión adecuados del lenguaje no literal.
Objetivo
Children are born communicators. A growing body of developmental evidence suggests that the cognitive abilities enabling the expression and comprehension of communicative intentions – so-called pragmatic abilities – which underlie language use and understanding, develop early. However, a puzzling feature of pragmatic development is young children’s difficulties with non-literal uses of language (e.g. “I love you so much I could eat you up!”). How can children be early experts at a range of pragmatically complex tasks requiring attention to speakers’ intentions, but act like ‘literal listeners’ in other contexts? The objective of DEVCOM is to provide an account of the stages and factors involved in children’s developing competence with non-literal uses of language. The project will investigate the novel hypothesis that children’s growing sensitivity to sense conventions, which determine the publicly accepted meaning of words in their language, impedes children’s pragmatic reasoning with non-literal uses in the pre-school years. The empirical data will be gleaned from experimental studies with typically developing children aged 2-7 years, focusing on lexical innovation, lexical modulation, and figurative language, each highlighting the interaction of pragmatic reasoning with sensitivity to sense conventions in a distinct way. Further, the project will investigate whether the persistent difficulties with non-literal uses faced by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder may be linked to the same source. The project will use a set of novel methodologies combining explicit and implicit measures, assuming that while children’s performance on explicit measures is liable to be affected by a growing sensitivity to sense conventions, implicit measures may be more revealing of their actual pragmatic abilities. The empirical results will provide input to a novel theoretical account of pragmatic development that resolves the developmental puzzle of non-literal uses of language.
Ámbito científico
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Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
0313 Oslo
Noruega