Semantic Adaptation in Quantifier Use in Preschool Aged Children

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: How flexible are children’s semantic representations? It is unknown whether they understand that others may have semantic boundaries that are different from their own. Adults update their expectations about how a speaker uses quantifiers after exposure to the speaker (Yildirim, Degen, Tanenhaus, & Jaeger, 2016). Here, we explore whether this ability is present in, preschool-aged children. In Experiment 1, we show that preschoolers have adult-like expectations about how a generic speaker would use the quantifiers some (< 50%) and many (>50%). In Experiment 2, forty 4 and 5-year-olds (mean = 4.6) were exposed to a speaker who was biased to either prefer using some or many in a situation with a proportion of 50%. After exposure, participants updated their expectations about the use of some and many, such that they aligned better with the exposure speaker’s usage, suggesting that preschoolers are able to engage in semantic adaptation. This suggests that preschoolers can use their prior exposure to a speaker’s utterances in order to predict their future speech patterns, which demonstrates that children are attentive to their conversational partners even at a very subtle level. Further research could explore whether children are able to adapt to multiple speakers at the same time.

Type of resource	text
Date created	June 5, 2020

Author	Regan, Sophie
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Symbolic Systems Program
Primary advisor	Frank, Michael C.
Advisor	Degen, Judith

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/wk583ct8407

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Regan, Sophie. (2020). Semantic Adaptation in Quantifier Use in Preschool Aged Children. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/wk583ct8407

Undergraduate Honors Theses, Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University

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