Young children and the say/mean distinction: verbatim and paraphrase recognition in narrative and nursery rhyme contexts

Children's ability to distinguish between the text, WHAT WAS SAID, and the intentional structure, WHAT WAS MEANT, was interrogated by means of verbatim and paraphrase questions in two types of discourse, narratives and nursery rhymes. Three- to seven-year-olds participated (n = 119, mean age 5·1). There was an interaction between the type of discourse and the younger children's ability to separate wording from intentional structure. In the narrative form they had difficulty rejecting true paraphrases when asked to focus on wording, while in the nursery rhyme form the difficulty was accepting a true paraphrase when asked to focus on intention.

[1]  Ellen Winner,et al.  The Point Of Words: Children's Understanding Of Metaphor And Irony , 1990 .

[2]  J. Flavell,et al.  Development of the ability to distinguish communicative intention and literal message meaning. , 1984, Child development.

[3]  Bruce D. Homer,et al.  Literacy and Children's Conception of Words , 1999 .

[4]  Peter Lloyd,et al.  The growth of speaker and listener skills from five to eleven years , 1998 .

[5]  David T. Hakes,et al.  The development of metalinguistic abilities in children , 1980 .

[6]  P. Bertelson,et al.  Literacy training and speech segmentation , 1986, Cognition.

[7]  Gary Bonitatibus,et al.  Comprehension Monitoring and the Apprehension of Literal Meaning. , 1988 .

[8]  C. Read,et al.  The ability to manipulate speech sounds depends on knowing alphabetic writing , 1986, Cognition.

[9]  R. Jakobson.  On Language , 1990 .

[10]  Jessie F. Reid,et al.  LEARNING TO THINK ABOUT READING , 1966 .

[11]  J. Piaget,et al.  The Origins of Intelligence in Children , 1971 .

[12]  E. Ferreiro,et al.  Literacy before schooling , 1982 .

[13]  Maya Hickmann,et al.  Reflexive language: The boundaries of reported speech in narrative discourse: some developmental aspects , 1993 .

[14]  Lila R. Gleitman,et al.  Phrase and Paraphrase: Some Innovative Uses of Language , 1970 .

[15]  E. Robinson,et al.  Children's explanations of communication failure and the inadequacy of the misunderstood message. , 1977 .

[16]  P. L. Adams.  THE ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE IN CHILDREN , 1976 .

[17]  L. Reid.  The Effects of Focusing Children's Attention on the Literal Meaning of the Message. , 1996 .