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Running Head: DO PRESCHOOLERS USE CONTEXT CUES
Do context cues help preschoolers learn words by differentiating between reliable and unreliable
informants?
Michelle Doscas
Vanderbilt University
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Abstract
The present study investigates if 4-year-old children use people’s pragmatic competence
as a standard for learning from them. In this study we define a person’s pragmatic competence
by their ability to adhere to the Gricean maxim of relation. The children were divided into three
conditions with different levels of verbal context, a no context condition, a rich context condition
and a richer context condition. Four-year-olds did not perform differently based on the level of
context they received. A linear regression revealed that children’s ability to answer
comprehension questions correctly while watching a video, predicted their performance on the
word-learning task.
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Do context cues help preschoolers learn words by differentiating between reliable and
unreliable informants?
Children can learn quite a bit from engaging in conversations with others. For example,
they can learn to wait their turn and to ask relevant questions, as well as learn about various
things around them. However, children need to have a certain mastery of pragmatic competence
to understand and follow conversations. They need to know when it is their turn to speak, when
to answer questions relevantly, and many other things. When speaking to a young child, one can
tell when they do not fully understand some of these pragmatic steps. For instance, when talking
to a four year old, you may ask them, “What’s your name?” and they may reply with an answer
that is not only not their name, but instead is a very long story about something that happened to
them on the playground today. Below I review research that investigates when preschoolers
might understand principles of conversation.
In 1975, Paul Grice identified and defined several conversational maxims that are
necessary to understand speech. These maxims are known as Gricean maxims. The four main
Gricean maxims are quality, relation, quantity, and manner (Grice, 1975). Quality is the idea
that one must say what they know to be true in a conversation. Relation is that one must make
their statement relevant to the conversation. Quantity refers to the idea that one should only say
as much as is needed. Manner means that one should avoid ambiguity and be clear. One
assumption is that speakers have to adhere to these principles for conversation to proceed
smoothly. As long as speakers adhere to a principle to be cooperative during conversations they
can violate the maxim to convey non-literal meaning (like sarcasm). But they may also violate
the maxims if they are distracted or unable to (because they do not understand them). One
question is when children understand why maxims are violated.
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Previous research shows that children between the ages of three and five understood
when the quality and relation maxims were violated (Eskritt, Whalen & Lee, 2008). In this study,
three to five year olds performed a task that involved finding a sticker hidden underneath one of
four possible cups. Children were shown two puppets, one of which was a Gricean maxim
adherer and the other was a non-adherer. The children were told that they could ask one of these
puppets for help finding the sticker during the test trials, but were not told that one would be
more helpful in finding the sticker than the other. For example, in a condition investigating
children’s understanding of the relation maxim, the puppet that was the Gricean maxim adherer
would say, “It is under the blue cup” when asked where the sticker was, but the puppet that was
the Gricean maxim non-adherer would respond by saying, “I like these cups.” That is, the
puppet that was the Gricean maxim non-adherer would provide irrelevant information that did
not answer the question properly. Children were told that they could ask one of two puppets for
help finding this sticker, and they were allowed to keep the sticker if they found it on the first try.
There were four practice trials followed by ten test trials. The only difference between
the practice trials and the test trials was in the practice trials, the experimenter (rather than the
child) picked the puppet. In two of the practice trials the experimenter picked the puppet who
adhered to the Gricean maxim (so the child was able to find the sticker), and in the other two
practice trials the experimenter picked the puppet who did not adhere to the Gricean maxim (so
the child was not able to find the sticker). During the ten test trials, the child was asked to pick a
puppet each trial in order to find the sticker hidden underneath one of the four cups. This study
found that 3-5-year-old children picked the puppet that adhered to the maxim. They were most
likely to do this when the puppet violated the quality maxim (be truthful) and the relation maxim
(be relevant).
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In a more recent study, researchers used a different method to investigate whether 4- and
6-year-old children understand violations of the relation and quality Gricean maxims (Vazquez,
Delisle, Saylor, under review) and whether they will use the information to decide who is more
likely to know the names for things. Previous research has shown that children are more likely
to trust a speaker who was previously reliable, and they will in turn endorse this speaker when
learning words for novel objects (Koenig & Harris, 2005, Pasquini, Corriveau, Koenig & Harris,
2007, Birch, Vauthier & Bloom, 2008). During the Vazquez et al (under review) study children
watched an interaction between two people, and then watched a second interaction between two
people. During the interactions one person asked another person questions. In one of these
interactions the person being questioned answered a question in a way that showed adherence to
a Gricean maxim (‘good’ social partner), and in the other interaction the person violated the
maxim (‘bad’ social partner). If children recognize that one person adhered to the maxim and
one person violated the maxim, they should be able to pick the person who was better at
answering questions. After the participants watched two videos in which an actor violated the
maxim, they were asked which person would be more likely to know a name for something.
Each maxim was tested in separate conditions. This study has found that six year olds identified
adherence to both the quality and relation maxims and chose person who adhered to the maxim
as the good labeler. They found that four year olds identified the maxim non-adherer (bad social
partner) in the quality condition, but not in the relation condition. They also found that four year
olds picked the maxim adherer (good social partner) as the good labeler for the quality maxim
but not for the relation maxim (Vasquez, Delisle & Saylor, under review).
There is a discrepancy between these two studies. Recall that, Eskritt et al (2008) found
that even three-year-olds could identify violations of the relation maxim (be relevant). In
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contrast, Vazquez et al (under review) found that four year olds were unable to identify the nonadherer in the relation condition. What might account for this difference? One reason that this
may be is that in the Eskritt et al (2008) study, children were provided with a large amount of
feedback during a training period as well as incentives. Their study had a training period, where
the children learned the procedure before they had to participate in the experimental portion.
Also, the children received stickers for every question that they answered correctly on the first
try, which may have provided an incentive for them. In the Vazquez et al study, the children
were not put through a training period, and were not provided with any feedback or incentives.
One possibility is that four year olds actually may need more support to identify violations of the
relation maxim.
One reason is that violations of the relation maxim are not as clear-cut as violations of the
quality maxim. For example, in the Vazquez et al (under review) study, the non-adherer to the
quality maxim is asked, “How many balls do you have there?” and they respond with, “I have
sixty balls here!” they are then asked, “Where is the green ball?” and they respond with, “On the
floor.” In this case, the quality non-adherer is simply not responding truthfully to the questions
being asked. The non-adherer to the relation maxim is asked, “How many balloons do you have
there?” and they respond with, “I like to eat turkey!” and then they are asked, “Where is the red
balloon?” and they respond with, “See my nose.” In this study, the relation non-adherer
responds with completely irrelevant information, causing the child to have to think about and
remember more themes. Another reason why the quality maxim may be a little simpler for the
children to understand is because they can see and also hear that the person is not being truthful,
and therefore violating this maxim. For example, the child is able to see on the video that the
person is only holding two balloons, and therefore when she says that she has sixty, she is clearly
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lying. Because children have a harder time recognizing the relation maxim, they may need more
help with understand this concept.
In my study I investigated four year olds ability to recognize the difference between
people who adhered and did not adhere to the relation Gricean maxim. Without any help out at
all, four year olds consistently fail tasks in which they are asked to recognize a non-adherer of
the relation maxim. I gave four year olds different levels of verbal scaffolding using the
Vazquez et al. procedure to attempt to help them identify when the relation maxim is violated. In
the first condition, the no context condition, the children received no verbal scaffolding. This
condition acted as a baseline measure of children’s ability to identify the maxim non-adherer. In
a second condition, the rich context condition, the children were told that the girls in the videos
would try their best to answer the questions correctly. In the third condition, the richer context
condition, the children were told that the girls in the video would try their hardest to give the
right answer to the questions and were also given evidence of a person offering good answers to
questions.
I hypothesized that the four year olds would fail to identify the relation maxim nonadherer (bad social partner) as well as not choose the adherer to the relation maxim (good social
partner) in the word-learning test in the no context condition, like they have in the past with
similar procedures, and that the four year olds would perform better (be able to recognize the
adherer from the non-adherer and subsequently choose the adherer as giving good labels) in the
rich context and richer context conditions because of the extra verbal scaffolding help.
Methods
Participants
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Forty-Eight 4-year-old children participated in this research (M=53.92 in months). All
children were English speaking and typically developing. Children were recruited from a
database of interested participants. Five additional children participated but their data were
excluded because of non-compliance (2), counterbalancing error (1) and experimenter error (2).
Materials
Two 13-inch television sets were placed in a table in front of a couch, and were
connected to DVD players. The experimenter controlled the DVD players with corresponding
remote controls. A digital camera was used to record the session.
The participants were shown two short video clips that lasted about thirty seconds. The
video clips included one of a good social partner and the other of a bad social partner. The social
partners are both females, and interacted with the same male actor in each video. One of the
social partners played with balloons, and the other played with balls. The good social partner
reliably followed the relation conversational maxim, while the bad social partner did not follow
this convention. The bad social partner replied to questions with irrelevant answers.
A box was used to house the 8 novel objects used during the word labeling trials. The
novel objects were purchased at a crafts store or made by removing parts from larger objects
until an unrecognizable part was left and they would be unnamable by children. Novel objects
were paired based on similar features, but were not identifiable (e.g. size, material). Each pair
was associated with one of four novel labels (i.e. dake, teg, glap, trome). See Figure 1.
Design and Procedure
Children were randomly divided into three conditions with the constraints that there be
equal numbers of boys and girls in each condition and that the mean age across conditions would
be equal: no context (M=54.42 in months, SD=3.29), rich context (M=53.95, SD=3.94), and
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richer context (M=53.38, SD=3.28). In the no context condition, children were not given any
information about what they were going to see. In the rich context condition, children were
shown a picture of the three actors in the videos and given a short explanation about their
intention in answering questions. In the richer context condition, children were shown the same
picture, but then were given a longer explanation of the intentions of the actors as well as asked a
few leading questions to help them think in a certain way. Both context conditions are described
in greater detail below. The children were tested on the relation maxim in the no context
condition and in either of the two experimental conditions.
Each condition included two phases, the familiarization phase and the word-learning
phase. I begin by describing the procedure for the no context condition. Participants sat in the
middle of the couch equidistant from the television sets. When no video was playing, each
television displayed an image of the actor whose video would be shown. The experimenter
always sat to the right of the participants. The box of novel objects was placed out of view from
the child, next to the experimenter. They were told that they would be watching videos.
No Context Condition. In this condition there was a familiarization phase and a wordlearning phase. There was no additional information provided to the child before they watched
the videos. In the familiarization phase, the children were shown both of the videos and were
asked to determine the good and the bad social partner. In this phase we are looking to see if they
can identify the reliability of the actors based on the relation conversational maxim.
The experimenter first introduced the actors by saying, “We are going to watch some of
my friends on TV. One of them is wearing a pink shirt, and the other one is wearing a red shirt.
Can you point to the girl with the pink shirt? Can you point to the with the red shirt?” The
children then watched the first video, and were asked two comprehension questions after it was
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over. For example, the child was asked, “When he asked her how many balls she had what did
she say? When he asked her where the green ball was, what did she say?” After this, the child
watched the same video again, and was then asked, “was she good at answering questions, or
was she not very good at answering questions?” This procedure was then repeated for the second
video. After the second video and questions were completed, the child was asked, “Who was
better at answering questions?” After this question was asked, the word-learning phase began.
The experimenter introduced this idea by saying, “They were both here yesterday, and I asked
them some questions about the toys in this box. I asked them the names of the toys, but I don’t
know the names of the toys, so you’ll have to help me figure it out.”
The word-learning phase looked at the child’s ability to learn new words or labels from
each social partner. It consisted of four trials, and in each trial the child was presented with a
pair of novel objects labeled by each of the actors. The children had to decide which object was
labeled correctly. One of four novel labels (i.e. trome, dake, glap, teg) was presented in each trial
and participants determined the correct referent.
All of the novel pairs were presented in the same way. The experimenter showed the
object to the child and placed it in front of the picture (on the TV screen) of the corresponding
actor, while saying, “The girl in the red shirt said that this was a trome.” The experimenter then
says, “And the girl in the pink shirt said that this was a trome.” The experimenter then looks at
the child and says, “They can’t both be tromes! Only one can be a trome. Which one is the
trome?” The participant then selected an object by pointing or describing it.
All factors in this experiment are counterbalanced. The actor who played the good social
partner, the television on which the good social partner’s video was shown, and the order in
which the videos were shown were all counterbalanced. The order of the questions asked were
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counterbalanced, as well as the objects being labeled.
Rich Context Condition. The rich context condition was the same as the no context
condition except that, before the child was shown the videos during the familiarization phase, he
or she was shown a small poster with three pictures on it. There was a picture of each actor in
the videos. Screen shots of the girl with the red shirt and the girl with the pink shirt were at the
top of the poster. There was a picture of Mark, the only male actor, underneath the girls’
pictures. The experimenter then said, “These are my friends, one is wearing a pink shirt and the
other is wearing a red shirt. This is Mark, he likes to ask a lot of questions. Mark is going to ask
my friends for help answering these questions, and they are going to try as best as they can to
answer these questions.” After this the procedure continued as in the no-context condition.
Richer Context Condition. The richer context condition was the same as the no context
condition except that, before the child is shown the videos, they are shown the same poster as
they are shown in the rich context condition. They are then told, “These are my friends, one of
them is wearing a pink shirt and one of them is wearing a red shirt. This is Mark. Mark needs to
answer some questions and he needs the right answers. He's going to ask my friends for help.
They want to give him the right answer. For example, if he asks them what color the ceiling
is, they should say that it is white. If Mark asked them what color the couch is, what should they
say? (The child answers blue) That's right! They want to give him the right answer or (the child
does not answer blue) now, remember they want to give him the right answer. What color would
they say the couch is? Let's watch them! Remember, they want to give Mark the right answers.”
The procedure then continued as in the no -context condition.
Coding.
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Comprehension questions. The comprehension questions were the four questions that
the participant answered after watching each video clip for the first time. They received a score
of 1 for a correct answer and 0 for an incorrect answer. The questions were open ended (rather
than forced choice) and some children did not provide answers to one or more of them (e.g.
saying “I don’t know,” or remaining quiet). These responses were not included in the analyses
because we wanted to be sure that we did not underestimate children’s ability to follow the
procedure. Since the total number of coded responses differed by child, the scores were
converted to proportions (total number correct/number of answers provided).
Conversation partner assessment and comparison questions. The children were asked
three assessment questions while watching the videos. They were asked, “Was she good at
answering questions or was she not very good at answering questions?” after watching each
video. They were then asked, “Who was better at answering questions, the girl in the pink shirt
or the girl in the red shirt?” They were given one point for each of these questions that they
answered correctly. There was a possibility of them receiving a total of three points.
Word-learning trials. In the word learning phase, the children were asked to choose the
object that they believed was labeled correctly. There were four trials, and they were given one
point for each of the objects that they chose that were labeled by the good social partner. There
was a total of four possible points for this portion. We predicted that those children who
correctly identified the good social partner in the assessment questions, would then be able to
recognize that the objects labeled by the good social partner were the correctly labeled objects.
Results
In what follows, we first asked how well children understood the procedure by reporting
their responses to comprehension questions. Then, we analyzed the conversation partner
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assessment and comparison questions, which tested children’s ability to recognize adherence to
the conversation maxim. After this, we looked at how children’s use of past pragmatic
competence affected their ability to make inferences about the speaker’s reliability in the wordlearning phase. Finally, we asked whether children’s answers to comprehension questions or
conversation partner assessment and comparison questions predicted their ability to choose the
reliable speaker’s object in the word-learning phase.
Comprehension Questions
The children watched two videos in the familiarization phase, and after watching each of
these videos for the first time they were asked two comprehension questions. These questions
were put in place to ensure that the participants were paying attention to the videos. The effect
of the comprehension questions was assessed with a 2 (sex) x 3 (condition: no context, rich
context and richer context) ANOVA. There was no main effect of condition (F (2,48) = 1.30, p
= .28). There was no difference in response ability across the no context (M = .75, SD = .29),
rich context (M = .75, SD = .27) or richer context (M = .60, SD = .30) conditions. There was also
no main effect of sex (F (1,48) = .00, p = .99). Males (M = .71, SD = .27) were not more likely
to answer the comprehension questions correctly than females (M = .70, SD = .32). There was
also not a significant sex by condition interaction (F(2, 48)=.94, p= .40). See Figure 2.
Conversation partner assessment and comparison questions
One goal of this study was to assess if children are aware of those who adhere to
conversation maxims (specifically the relation maxim) by watching everyday conversations. We
examined this from the two conversation partner assessment questions and the one conversation
partner comparison question. The effect of verbal context on maxim recognition was assessed
with a 2 x 3 ANOVA, with sex and condition (no context, rich context, and richer context).
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First, there was no main effect of condition (F (2,48) = .66, p = .52). There were no differences
in children’s ability to identify the maxim adherer across the no context (M = 2.32, SD = .749),
rich context (M = 2.37, SD = .68), and richer context (M = 2.06, SD = .93) conditions. There was
also no main effect of sex (F (1,48) = .55, p = .46). Males (M = 2.20, SD = .81) were not more
likely to understand these questions than females (M = 2.33, SD = .76). There was also not a
significant sex by condition interaction (F(2, 48)=.47, p=.63). See Figure 3.
As another way to investigate children’s responding we asked how they performed on
each question individually. The pattern of responses across condition indicated that children
consistently answered the bad social partner assessment question incorrectly. In the no context
condition, they answered the good social partner question (18 out of 19, p  .05, binomial
probability) and the partner comparison question (16 out of 19, p  .05) correctly, but not the bad
social partner question (10 out of 19, p =ns). In the rich context condition, they answered the
good social partner question (18 out of 19, p  .05) and the partner comparison question (17 out
of 19, p  .05) correctly, but not the bad social partner question (10 out of 19, p = ns). In the
richer context condition, they answered the good social partner question (16 out of 16, p  .05)
correctly, but not the partner comparison question (10 out of 16, p=ns) or the bad social partner
question (7 out of 16, p = ns).
Word-learning test
The word-learning phase assessed children’s trust of the conversation partners in the
videos. We predicted that children would select the object labeled by the good conversation
partner. We measured this with a 2 x 3 ANOVA, and word learning test score was the dependent
variable, while condition and sex were the independent variables. There was no main effect of
condition (F(2, 48) = .79, p = .46). There was also no main effect of sex (F(1, 48) = 1.10, p =
15
.30), or a significant sex by condition interaction (F(2, 48) = .12, p = .90). The scores for the
word-learning phase were also tested against chance to evaluate the reliability of children’s
responding. Four year olds were at chance in all three conditions; no context (M=2.21 out of 4,
SD=1.03, t(18) =.89, p=.39) , rich context (M=2.47, SD=1.07, t(18)=1.92, p=.07) and richer
context (M=2.06, SD=1.12, t(15)=.22, p=.83). See Figure 4.
We used a linear regression model to investigate whether it was children’s attention to the
videos (as shown by the comprehension questions) or children’s ability to identify the person
who adhered to the maxim (as shown by the assessment questions) that predicted their
performance. Comprehension score and assessment question score were the independent
variables, and score on the word-learning test was the dependent variable. The model was
significant (F(2, 51)=4.71, p=.01) with comprehension question score as the only independent
predictor of children’s word learning scores (t(2)=2.69, p=.01). This suggests that children’s
attentiveness to the videos was the only predictor of their ability to choose the correct referent
during word-learning trials. See table 1 for raw correlations and the regression table.
Discussion
This study investigated whether adding verbal context would help four-year-olds better
understand the Gricean maxim of relation. The verbal context did not seem to improve
children’s performance over what was seen in previous research. While children showed an
overall tendency to answer the maxim assessment questions correctly, they were not able to
recognize the maxim non-adherer across any of the study conditions. Also, four-year-olds did
not show a significant tendency to pick the good labeler in the word-learning phase. However,
the children’s ability to answer the comprehension questions correctly while watching the videos
were then able to pick the good labeler in the word-learning test. These findings show that four-
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year-old children may struggle in recognizing the relation Gricean maxim, but may be able to
pick the good labeler during the word-learning test if they pay close attention to the events in the
videos.
What have we learned about children’s knowledge about Gricean maxims?
This research agrees with previous findings that four-year-olds struggle to understand the
relation Gricean maxim. In one previous study, four-year-olds were not able to recognize
relation maxim non-adherers, and were also not able to pick the maxim adherer as the good
labeler for word-learning trials (Vazquez, et al., under review). This contrasted with a different
previous study that showed that four-year-olds can recognize non-adherence to the relation
Gricean maxim as long as they have an abundance of practice as well as incentives (Eskritt et al.,
2008). While, four-year-olds were able to detect who the relation maxim adherer was they did
not use this information to learn from the maxim adherer, and could not identify the person who
violated the maxim. This last finding is the same as what the Vazquez et al (under review) study
found. Four-year-olds were significantly more likely to recognize the good labeler if they
answered the comprehension questions correctly. This suggests that four-year-olds are able to
learn from the maxim adherer, if they are able to first be attentive to a conversation that they
watch the maxim adherer have.
What accounts for four-year-olds’ difficulty with the maxim of relation?
Four-year-olds did not choose the novel objects labeled by the maxim adherer. When
looking at their responses to the individual assessment questions, it is clear that the four-yearolds had a lot more trouble recognizing the maxim non-adherer or the ‘bad social partner.’ One
reason why children may have struggled in this area is because the relation maxim violations
may be somewhat harder for them to detect. The relation maxim can only be judged in the
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context of a conversation, and therefore the violation might be harder to detect for four-yearolds. This detection may be difficult because the violations can often make sense out of context.
For example, in this study, the maxim non-adherer gives the response, “I like to eat turkey,” and
this could easily be a response to a question, but not the question that was asked (“How many
balloons do you have there?”).
The additional verbal context added in this study was an attempt to help them understand
the speakers’ intentions. I hypothesized that helping the children understand that the speakers’
were trying as hard as they could to give the right answers would have helped them recognize the
maxim non-adherer. The additional context did not help four-year-olds with recognizing the
maxim non-adherer or with choosing the good labeler in the word-learning trial. The children
may not have been able to comprehend and then hold the information given to them about the
speakers’ intentions throughout the video clips. Also, knowing the intention of the speaker
might not be as important as just paying attention to the conversation that is happening, because
this study showed that four-year-olds who understood what was happening in the given
conversation were able to learn from the relation maxim adherer.
Our surprising finding was that four-year-olds in the richer context condition performed
worse on the assessment questions than those in the no context and rich context conditions. In
general, this condition seemed to confuse the preschoolers. The addition of extra context as well
as asking them a question before the start of the test trial may have caused them to not
understand what they were supposed to be paying attention to, but it may have helped others to
focus on the people in the videos more closely. They were not able to consistently recognize the
maxim non-adherer and they were not able to recognize which person was better at answering
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questions. The relation maxim is difficult for them to understand in general, and adding too
much context seemed to confuse them further.
Summary.
This study asked whether four-year-olds were able to recognize adherers and nonadherers of the relation Gricean maxim. They were provided with verbal context to help them
understand the speakers’ intentions. This extra verbal context was expected to help the children
recognize the non-adherer as well as help them choose the maxim adherer for the good labeler in
the word-learning test. We found that four-year-olds did not perform differently in the study
based on which level of context they were given. A linear regression showed that children who
answered comprehension questions correctly throughout the video portion of the study, were
more likely to select and learn from the maxim adherer during the word-learning test. Our
findings suggest that four-year-olds continue to struggle to recognize the Gricean maxim nonadherer, and that presenting them with verbal context did not help them. Our results also show
that children who focus and understand the conversation are able to better recognize the maxim
adherer as the good labeler in the word-learning trial, and therefore this aspect of the study might
be more important than previously thought.
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Table 1
Raw Correlations and Regression Analysis of Word Learning Test Score
Word learning
Variables
(DV)
Comprehension
.40**
Assessment
.19
Comprehension
B
SE B
β
___
___
1.46
.54
0.40
.48**
___
-.003
.20
-.002
Note: R squared=.16, Adjusted R squared=1.2, R=.40
**p<.01
Assessment
21
Figure 1. Test object pairs
22
Figure 2. Comprehension question scores
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Figure 3. Assessment question scores
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Figure 4. Word-learning test score