title: What hinders child semantic computation: children's universal quantification and the development of cognitive control.
abstract: Recent studies on the acquisition of semantics have argued that knowledge of the universal quantifier is adult-like throughout development. However, there are domains where children still exhibit non-adult-like universal quantification, and arguments for the early mastery of relevant semantic knowledge do not explain what causes such non-adult-like interpretations. The present study investigates Japanese four- and five-year-old children's atypical universal quantification in light of the development of cognitive control. We hypothesized that children's still-developing cognitive control contributes to their atypical universal quantification. Using a combined eye-tracking and interpretation task together with a non-linguistic measure of cognitive control, we revealed a link between the achievement of adult-like universal quantification and the development of flexible perspective-switch. We argue that the development of cognitive control is one of the factors that contribute to children's processing of semantics.
authors.affiliation: University of Kansas, Department of Linguistics and RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Laboratory for Language Development, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. minai@hu.edu
authors.forename: Utako
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Minai
authors.forename: Nobuyuki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Jincho
authors.forename: Naoto
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yamane
authors.forename: Reiko
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mazuka
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012660:Semantics