Observations on Communication Problems in Normal Children

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the studies that show when faced with problems in communication, normal children typically respond. Thus, they provide a response when the meanings of the terms in the instructions are either not understood, as with less and fewer, or cannot be understood. They respond to questions although the intended referents of terms in the questions are not clear to them, as with horses and cows in the context of comparing sets and subsets. They typically provide responses even to the questions that do not make sense and whose meanings cannot be clear to the child as the questions stand, as in the context of being asked bizarre questions. It has been seen something of the variety of resources that children bring to bear in arriving at solutions to, or at least resolutions of, such problems. If their responses are not wholly determined by the language of the questions or instructions, because of the gaps in knowledge and understanding that such questions and instructions involve, then other factors come into play.