Children's Interpretation of Filled Pauses in Referential Communication: Exploring the Functions of Discourse Status and Object Familiarity
Date
2015-05-20
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Abstract
In this dissertation I investigated children’s sensitivity to the presence of filled pauses (uh or um) in referential communication. Specifically, I examined whether children generate expectations about a speaker’s referential intent, based on the information that is conveyed by the presence of a filled pause. A visual world eye-tracking paradigm was used in all experiments.
In Chapter 2, I examined whether 2- and 3-year-olds appreciate that filled pauses often precede reference to objects that are new to a discourse. Children viewed pairs of familiar objects on a screen and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects twice in succession. Next, children heard a critical utterance and were asked to look and point at either the discourse-given (i.e., previously mentioned) or discourse-new (i.e., previously unmentioned) object using a fluent (“Look at the ball!”) or disfluent (“Look at thee uh ball!”) expression. The results indicated that 3-year-old children, but not 2-year-old children, initially expected the speaker to continue to refer to given information in the critical utterance. Upon hearing a filled pause, however, both 2- and 3-year-old children’s looking patterns reflected increased looks to discourse-new objects, though the timing of the effect differed between the age groups.
In Chapter 3, I examined whether children recognize that filled pauses may signal reference to unfamiliar objects. Across three experiments, 3- and 5-year-old children were presented with pairs of novel and familiar objects and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects using a fluent or disfluent expression. The salience of the speaker’s unfamiliarity with the novel referents, and the way in which the speaker referred to the novel referents (i.e., with a novel noun or description), varied across experiments. Both 3- and 5-year-old children successfully identified familiar and novel targets, but looking patterns failed to show effects of filled pauses on processing.
Together, these findings demonstrate that young children have an emerging understanding of the role of filled pauses in speech. Under certain circumstances, children as young as 2-years-old will use filled pauses to guide their processing of referential communication. Chapter 4 summarizes and explores the aforementioned findings in greater detail.
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Psychology--Cognitive, Psychology--Developmental
Citation
Owens, S. (2015). Children's Interpretation of Filled Pauses in Referential Communication: Exploring the Functions of Discourse Status and Object Familiarity (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25319