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Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Grosse, G; Scott-Phillips, TC; Tomasello, M
Published in: Developmental psychology
November 2013

Human cooperative communication involves both an informative intention that the recipient understands the content of the signal and also a (Gricean) communicative intention that the recipient recognizes that the speaker has an informative intention. The degree to which children understand this 2-layered nature of communication is the subject of some debate. One phenomenon that would seem to constitute clear evidence of such understanding is hidden authorship, in which informative acts are produced but with the communicative intent behind them intentionally hidden. In this study, 3- and 5-year-old children were told that an adult was seeking a toy but wanted to find it on her own. Children of both ages often did something to make the toy easier for the adult to see while at the same time concealing their actions in some way. This suggests that by the age of 3, children are able to separate the multiple layers of intentionality involved in human cooperative communication.

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Published In

Developmental psychology

DOI

EISSN

1939-0599

ISSN

0012-1649

Publication Date

November 2013

Volume

49

Issue

11

Start / End Page

2095 / 2101

Related Subject Headings

  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Problem Solving
  • Neuropsychological Tests
  • Multivariate Analysis
  • Male
  • Intention
  • Humans
  • Female
  • Developmental & Child Psychology
  • Communication
 

Citation

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Grosse, G., Scott-Phillips, T. C., & Tomasello, M. (2013). Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts. Developmental Psychology, 49(11), 2095–2101. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032017
Grosse, Gerlind, Thomas C. Scott-Phillips, and Michael Tomasello. “Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts.Developmental Psychology 49, no. 11 (November 2013): 2095–2101. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032017.
Grosse G, Scott-Phillips TC, Tomasello M. Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts. Developmental psychology. 2013 Nov;49(11):2095–101.
Grosse, Gerlind, et al. “Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts.Developmental Psychology, vol. 49, no. 11, Nov. 2013, pp. 2095–101. Epmc, doi:10.1037/a0032017.
Grosse G, Scott-Phillips TC, Tomasello M. Three-year-olds hide their communicative intentions in appropriate contexts. Developmental psychology. 2013 Nov;49(11):2095–2101.

Published In

Developmental psychology

DOI

EISSN

1939-0599

ISSN

0012-1649

Publication Date

November 2013

Volume

49

Issue

11

Start / End Page

2095 / 2101

Related Subject Headings

  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Problem Solving
  • Neuropsychological Tests
  • Multivariate Analysis
  • Male
  • Intention
  • Humans
  • Female
  • Developmental & Child Psychology
  • Communication