title: Children's understanding of ambiguous idioms and conversational perspective-taking.
abstract: The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that conversational perspective-taking is a determinant of unfamiliar ambiguous idiom comprehension. We investigated two types of ambiguous idiom, decomposable and nondecomposable expressions, which differ in the degree to which the literal meanings of the individual words contribute to the overall idiomatic meaning. We designed an experiment to assess the relationship between the acquisition of figurative comprehension and conversational perspective-taking. Our sample of children aged 5-7 years performed three conversational perspective-taking tasks (language acts, shared/unshared information, and conversational maxims). They then listened to decomposable and nondecomposable idiomatic expressions presented in context before performing a multiple-choice task (figurative, literal, and contextual responses). Results indicated that decomposable idiom comprehension was predicted by conversational perspective-taking scores and language skills, whereas nondecomposable idiom comprehension was predicted solely by language skills. We discuss our findings with respect to verbal and pragmatic skills.
authors.affiliation: Centre de Recherches en Psychologie, Cognition, et Communication, CRPCC, EA 1285, Université Rennes 2, 35043 Rennes, France. sandrine.lesourn-bissaoui@uhb.fr
authors.forename: Sandrine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Le Sourn-Bissaoui
authors.forename: Stéphanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Caillies
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bernard
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Deleau
authors.forename: Lauriane
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Brulé
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech