The semantics and pragmatics of belief reports in preschoolers

Authors

  • Shevaun Lewis
  • Jeffrey Lidz
  • Valentine Hacquard

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v22i0.3085

Abstract

Children under 4 years have been claimed to lack adult-like semantic representations of belief verbs like think. Based on two experiments involving a truth-value judgment task, we argue that 4-year olds' apparently deviant interpretations arise from pragmatic difficulty understanding the relevance of belief, rather than from conceptual or semantic immaturity.

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Published

2012-09-03

Issue

Section

Articles