Young children understand the normative implications of future-directed speech acts.
Much recent research has shown that the capacity for mental time travel and temporal reasoning emerges during the preschool years. Nothing is known so far, however, about young children's grasp of the normative dimension of future-directed thought and speech. The present study is the first to show that children from age 4 understand the normative outreach of such future-directed speech acts: subjects at time 1 witnessed a speaker make future-directed speech acts about/towards an actor A, either in imperative mode ("A, do X!") or as a prediction ("the actor A will do X"). When at time 2 the actor A performed an action that did not match the content of the speech act at time 1, children identified the speaker as the source of a mistake in the prediction case, and the actor as the source of the mistake in the imperative case and leveled criticism accordingly. These findings add to our knowledge about the emergence and development of temporal cognition in revealing an early sensitivity to the normative aspects of future-orientation.
Institute of Psychology & Courant Research Centre, "Evolution of Social Behaviour", University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
Karoline
K
Lohse
Institute of Psychology & Courant Research Centre, "Evolution of Social Behaviour", University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany ; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Maria
M
Gräfenhain
Institute of Psychology & Courant Research Centre, "Evolution of Social Behaviour", University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
Tanya
T
Behne
Institute of Psychology & Courant Research Centre, "Evolution of Social Behaviour", University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
Hannes
H
Rakoczy
D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*