521839
research-article2014
FLA0010.1177/0142723714521839First LanguageGillis and Nilsen
FIRST
LANGUAGE
Article
Cognitive flexibility supports
preschoolers’ detection of
communicative ambiguity
First Language
2014, Vol. 34(1) 58­–71
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0142723714521839
fla.sagepub.com
Randall Gillis and Elizabeth S. Nilsen
University of Waterloo, Canada
Abstract
To become successful communicators, children must be sensitive to the clarity/ambiguity
of language. Significant gains in children’s ability to detect communicative ambiguity occur
during the early school-age years. However, little is known about the cognitive abilities
that support this development. Relations between cognitive flexibility and ambiguity
detection were assessed in preschool- (4- to 5-years-old, n = 40) and school-age (6to 7-years-old, n = 36) children. Children rated the quality of clues (unambiguous/
ambiguous) to the location of hidden stimuli provided by a videotaped speaker. Cognitive
flexibility was assessed through a task requiring children to sequentially sort toys. Both
age groups rated ambiguous clues as less helpful than unambiguous clues; however,
school-age children were better able to detect ambiguity. Cognitive flexibility was related
to preschool (but not school-age) children’s communicative ambiguity detection, when
controlling for age and receptive language. Results suggest that cognitive flexibility may
be particularly important for the initial development of ambiguity detection.
Keywords
Abstraction, ambiguity detection, cognitive flexibility, communicative ambiguity,
communicative development, executive function, language development, preschoolers,
referential ambiguity, school-age children
Successful communication requires that listeners accurately extrapolate meaning from
speakers’ messages. If a speaker delivers information in a clear and unambiguous
manner, little effort is required from the listener. However, speakers do not uniformly
Corresponding author:
Elizabeth S. Nilsen, Psychology Department, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West,
Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3G1.
Email: [email protected]
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Gillis and Nilsen
produce sufficient information for a listener (e.g., Ferreira & Dell, 2000; Kraljic &
Brennan, 2005) and overestimate the effectiveness of ambiguous utterances (Keysar &
Henly, 2002). Therefore, to avoid miscomprehension, listeners must identify whether a
message is unclear and subsequently seek clarification. As such, a key aspect of the
development of children’s referential communication (i.e., use of words to denote objects
and events) is the ability to detect ambiguity. For example, a competent communicator
would recognize that, when standing in front of a full bookshelf, the request ‘Pass the
book’ is ambiguous as there are many possible referents. While decades of research have
examined the development of preschool and school-age children’s ability to detect communicative ambiguity (e.g., Beck & Robinson, 2001; Cosgrove & Patterson, 1977;
Ironsmith & Whitehurst, 1978; Nilsen, Graham, Smith, & Chambers, 2008; Robinson,
1981; Robinson & Whittaker, 1985), little research has investigated the cognitive abilities that facilitate this development. The present work investigates whether children’s
capacity for flexible thinking assists them in detecting ambiguity in referential
descriptions.
Ambiguity detection develops through the school-age years (Lloyd, Mann, & Peers,
1998) with preschool-age children showing particular difficulty with detecting ambiguous language (e.g., Cosgrove & Patterson, 1977; Ironsmith & Whitehurst, 1978;
Robinson, 1981). When evaluating ambiguous information from a third person perspective (i.e., judging whether a statement would be ambiguous from another person’s perspective), children younger than 6-years-old typically overestimate the knowledge others
gain and have difficulty identifying that insufficient information was provided (Beal &
Belgrad, 1990; Chandler & Helm, 1984; Sodian, 1988; although earlier sensitivity has
been reported using implicit measures, e.g., Nilsen et al., 2008; Sekerina, Stromswold, &
Hestvik, 2004). Children tend to blame miscommunication on the listener, for example,
believing that listeners would be more successful at comprehending ambiguous messages if they tried harder (Robinson & Robinson, 1978). Further, school-age children
overestimate the helpfulness of ambiguous information communicated to them directly
(i.e., from a first person perspective; Asher, 1976; Bearison & Levey, 1977; Robinson &
Robinson, 1982). For example, young school-age children respond to ambiguous information even when given the opportunity to indicate that it was insufficient (Ackerman,
1981; Robinson & Whittaker, 1985), do not ask clarifying questions (Cosgrove &
Patterson, 1977; Ironsmith & Whitehurst, 1978; Robinson, 1981) and tend not to search
multiple locations for a hidden object before making a decision (Beck & Robinson,
2001).
Despite the abundance of research investigating the development of children’s ability
(or inability) to detect ambiguity, there has been markedly less research investigating the
skills that support this development. This being said, researchers have speculated about
what is required for ambiguity detection (e.g., metacognition, e.g., Flavell et al., 1981;
Lloyd et al., 1998; the ability to mentally represent information, e.g., Beck, Robinson, &
Freeth, 2008). Researchers have also considered reasons for the observed discrepancy
between implicit and explicit sensitivity to communicative ambiguity (e.g., executive
functioning; Nilsen & Graham, 2012). Moreover, task manipulations that vary cognitive
demands affect children’s ambiguity detection, suggesting that cognitive skills outside of
the communicative domain may play a role in ambiguity detection. For example, Beck
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First Language 34(1)
et al. (2008) demonstrated that 5- and 6-year-olds who did not have the added demand of
making a decision (i.e., deciding between making an interpretation using ambiguous
information or waiting for further information) were better able to accurately evaluate
ambiguous statements. Further, 4-year-old children who possessed prior knowledge of
the intended meaning of statements, compared to those who did not, had difficulty
detecting ambiguity due to the need to suppress this knowledge (Nilsen et al., 2008).
Thus, when tasks require more cognitive resources (e.g., predicting consequences of different decisions, inhibition) children are less able to detect when communicative ambiguity has occurred.
To our knowledge, only one study has directly examined the role that cognitive skills
play in children’s ambiguity detection. Specifically, Nilsen and Graham (2012) found that
when preschoolers with better inhibitory control skills were tested a year later, they were
more likely to detect communicative ambiguity from a naive listener’s perspective (i.e.,
third person perspective task). These authors speculate that inhibitory skills allow children
to inhibit their own perspective to determine whether a statement is ambiguous from the
perspective of the recipient of the message (i.e., inhibitory control was not related to
detecting ambiguity where perspective-taking was not required). However, suppressing
one’s own knowledge would not be required when children evaluate messages directed
towards them, thus, different cognitive skills may be required when the children themselves are the recipient of the message, a notion assessed in the present work.
When communicating, the same phrase can be ambiguous or clear depending on the
context in which it is uttered. For example, the statement ‘the red one’ is ambiguous
when presented in a context where all objects are red, whereas, in a context where all
objects are a different colour, this statement is unambiguous. Therefore, to successfully
evaluate communicative messages, children must process information conveyed linguistically against the contextual backdrop in which it occurs.
To detect communicative ambiguity, children should recognize that information about
colour property, in a context with multiple red items (i.e., the word ‘red’), would not differentiate the objects; instead information about another property (e.g., shape) would be
required. However, if the objects were all different colours, the child should recognize
that information about colour (i.e., the word ‘red’) would differentiate the object of interest from the remaining items. In this way, to uniquely identify a referent, listeners need
to think flexibly about the properties of objects in the context to know what is required
linguistically. As such, it would be anticipated that children who are better able to engage
in this flexible thinking would be better able to detect when ambiguity has occurred.
Cognitive flexibility, developing across the late preschool (e.g., Bennett & Müller,
2010; Garon, Bryson, & Smith, 2008) and early school-age years (e.g., Smidts, Jacobs,
& Anderson, 2004), is the ability to think flexibly and shift between different interpretations of the context (Anderson, 2002). To engage in flexible thinking, children must first
be able to abstract the different dimensions of an object or context (i.e., be aware that a
red ball is both ‘red’ and a ‘ball’; e.g., Werner, 1948) and subsequently think flexibly
about this information (Smidts et al., 2004). The ability to proficiently abstract relevant
properties of objects develops around 4 years of age, with the ability to proficiently shift
and reason flexibility about properties developing around 5 years of age (Jacques &
Zelazo, 2001).
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Gillis and Nilsen
The present study examined whether children with better cognitive flexibility
skills – associated with increased awareness of the multiple ways objects can be
considered – would be better able to detect when statements contain insufficient or
ambiguous information. Specifically, we predicted that children with higher scores on
a cognitive flexibility task would be better able to detect ambiguity on an ambiguity
detection task. As there are gains in children’s ambiguity detection skills around 6
years of age (Lloyd et al., 1998) and cognitive flexibility has been associated with
different skills at different developmental stages (Jacques & Zelazo, 2005) two age
groups were investigated: preschool-age children (4- to 5-years-old) and school-age
children (6- to 7-years-old). We anticipated that there would be an effect of age for
both the ambiguity detection task and the cognitive flexibility task. By analysing the
two age groups we were able to examine whether the potential relationship between
these two tasks was consistent across the two ages.
Children’s ability to detect communicative ambiguity was assessed in a task wherein
children rated clues to the location of hidden stickers from a videotaped speaker. The clues
provided were either unambiguous (i.e., clearly identified the shape that concealed the
sticker location) or ambiguous (i.e., did not differentiate between the shapes). Children’s
cognitive flexibility was assessed through a task which required them to sequentially sort
toys based on size (e.g., large, small), colour (e.g., red, yellow) and function (e.g., plane,
car) (Smidts et al., 2004). Receptive vocabulary was assessed and controlled for when
analysing relations between ambiguity detection and cognitive flexibility.
Method
Participants
Children were recruited from schools and preschools within a mid-sized North American
city, from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, and were taking part in a larger study
investigating children’s communication. Participants were 40 children aged 4- and
5-years-old (11 males, M = 60.05 months, SD = 7.62) and 36 children aged 6- and
7-years-old (13 males, M = 85.50 months, SD = 6.10). An additional four school-age
children were tested, but their data were excluded from analyses as they did not follow
task instructions (i.e., they looked beneath incorrect shapes following unambiguous
clues). Parents of all participants reported that their children were fluent in English.
Materials and procedure
Participants were tested individually by an experimenter in a quiet room within their
school or the research laboratory. The order of tasks was consistent across participants:
receptive vocabulary task, object classification task, ambiguity detection task.
Ambiguity detection task. In this task, children were positioned in front of a stimulus book
containing stickers concealed by various pictures (see Figure 1). Videotaped speakers
presented clues to the location of the hidden stickers. Each page of the stimulus book
depicted a row of three pictures that were either three different shapes of the same colour
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First Language 34(1)
Figure 1. Example of ambiguous and unambiguous trials in the ambiguity detection task.
(e.g., a red circle, a red triangle and a red star) or three identical shapes of different colours (e.g., a red circle, a green circle and a yellow circle). On each page, a sticker was
concealed under one of the three pictures. Each trial involved a new stimulus page
wherein the videotaped speaker provided a clue to the location of the sticker hidden on
that page.
The speakers’ clues varied in clarity; three ambiguous clues were provided as well as
three unambiguous clues for a total of six trials. The clarity of the clue depended on the
three pictures displayed in the stimulus book (i.e., the context). Unambiguous clues provided enough information to clearly identify one of the three pictures (i.e., the picture
that concealed the sticker). For example, if all three pictures were red, but different
shapes, an unambiguous clue would be ‘It’s under the square one.’ Ambiguous clues did
not provide enough information to clearly identify one of the three pictures. For example, if all three pictures were red, an ambiguous clue would be ‘It’s under the red one.’
The clues all had the same format (i.e., ‘It’s under the __ one.’). Clues contained adjectives that were all well within the vocabulary of the age groups being tested (Fenson
et al., 1994). The type of clue provided for each stimulus page was counterbalanced
across the children. That is, the order of ambiguous and unambiguous clues differed
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across the children while the order of pictures displayed in the stimulus book remained
the same. To determine whether children detected ambiguity, they were asked to rate the
quality of each clue. Importantly, to ensure that children were not influenced by the outcome of whether they were able to successfully locate the sticker, they rated the clue
quality prior to searching. Following each clue delivery, children were asked: ‘Was this
clue helpful? Yes, maybe, no?’ Ratings were made with the help of a visual scale depicting the three options with differently sized bars. ‘No’ was the shortest bar (i.e., just a thin
line), ‘maybe’ was half way between yes and no, while ‘yes’ was the tallest bar. Children’s
mean rating (i.e., from 1 to 3) of the ambiguous and unambiguous clues were included in
the analyses.
Object classification task. To assess children’s cognitive flexibility, the Object Classification Task for Children (OCTC) was administered (Smidts et al., 2004). During this task,
children were asked to sort six toys into two groups of three in three different ways. The
toys included a large red plane, small red plane, large red car, small yellow car, small
yellow plane and large yellow car. This combination of toys allowed children to sort by
size, colour or function. Two practice trials (using different toys) helped children to
become familiar with the task of sorting. Subsequently, children were asked to sort the
six test toys. The researcher administered the task according to the procedure outlined by
Smidts et al. (2004, pp. 391–392), and began by asking, ‘Can you make two groups for
me? But something has to be the same about the toys in each group. Can you put one
group on this side of the table and the other ones that go together on that side of the
table?’ If children were unable to do so, two toys were removed and the task was completed with four toys. After children sorted the toys, the examiner pointed to each group
and asked, ‘So, can you tell me what’s the same about these toys?’ Next, children were
asked to sort the toys into two groups again, and were told ‘this time something else has
to be the same about the toys’. This procedure was then repeated for a third time.
On each of the three possible sortings, children received three points for correctly
sorting the toys and one additional point for accurately labelling the differences, resulting in a total possible 12 points. If children were unable to correctly sort the toys in the
three different ways, the examiner created the groups that the child missed and asked,
‘See these two groups of toys? Can you tell me what’s the same about these toys? And
what’s the same about these?’ On trials administered in this fashion, children received
two points for correctly labelling the difference. If children were unable to accurately
label the differences, they were explicitly asked to sort the toys (e.g., ‘Can you put all of
the red toys on this side of the table, and all of the yellow toys on this side of the table?’).
On trials administered in this fashion, children received one point for accurately sorting
the toys.
Receptive vocabulary task. To assess children’s receptive vocabulary, the Picture Vocabulary subtest of the Test of Language Development Primary Third Edition (TOLD-P:3,
Newcomer & Hammill, 1997) was administered. Children were asked to point to the
picture representing the word spoken by the experimenter. This test was administered in
standardized fashion according to manual instructions. Children’s raw scores were
included in the analyses.
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Figure 2. Children’s mean ratings of the helpfulness of ambiguous and unambiguous clues
(error bars represent the standard error of the mean).
Results
Preliminary analyses
To ensure that children understood the task and were able to locate stickers following
unambiguous clues more consistently than following ambiguous clues, preschool- and
school-age children’s success at finding stickers was analysed. Single samples t-tests
were conducted against chance-levels (i.e., critical value of .33). As expected, both age
groups’ success at finding stickers – following their ratings of speaker helpfulness – did
not differ from chance for the ambiguous trials (ps > .33). Further, compared to chance,
both age groups were more likely to find the stickers on unambiguous trials (school-age:
M = .94, SD = .13, t(36) = 29.26, p < .001, d = 4.69; preschool-age, M = .97, SD = .10,
t(40) = 39.76, p < .001, d = 6.4). Of note, there was no difference between age groups in
the number of stickers children found after the unambiguous clues or the ambiguous
clues (ps > .39).
Ambiguity detection task
A 2 (Age – preschool-age, school-age) × 2 (Clue type – ambiguous, unambiguous) mixed
model ANOVA was conducted to investigate whether children were sensitive to the differential clarity of ambiguous versus unambiguous clues (Figure 2). The dependent variable was children’s mean ratings of whether each clue type was ‘helpful’. There was a
main effect of clue type, F (73) = 64.97, p < .001, ηp2 = .47, and age, F (73) = 21.56, p <
.001, ηp2 = .23. These main effects were qualified by a clue type by age interaction, F (73)
= 12.16, p = .001, ηp2 = .14. Follow-up comparisons (with Bonferroni correction; critical
values from Howell, 2010) revealed that both school-age and preschool-age children rated
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Gillis and Nilsen
Table 1. Bivariate correlations between demographic variables, cognitive skills and ambiguity
detection (partial correlations controlling for age and receptive language in parentheses).
Age
TOLD raw score
Preschool-age
School-age
Object classification
Preschool-age
School-age
Ambiguous clue rating
Preschool-age
School-age
Unambiguous clue rating
Preschool-age
School-age
TOLD raw
score
Object
classification
.19
.47**
.29
–.20
.37*
–.05
–.34*
–.19
–.36*
–.34*
–.50** (–.37*)
.10 (.08)
–.03
–.10
–.62**
–.10
–.24 (–.05)
.19 (.19)
Ambiguous
clue rating
.50**
.11
*p < .05, ** p < .005.
ambiguous clues as less helpful (school-age: M = 1.63, SD = .70; preschool-age, M = 2.40,
SD = .72) than unambiguous clues (school-age: M = 2.57, SD = .46; preschool-age, M =
2.78, SD = .37), t(39) = 7.10, d = .66, t(39) = 3.78, d = 1.59, respectively for school-age
and preschool-age children, ps ≤ .01. Preschool-age children rated ambiguous clues as
more helpful than school-age children, t(74) = 4.75, d = 1.08, p < .01. However, the two
age groups did not differ in their ratings of unambiguous clues, p > .05. Therefore, while
both preschool- and school-age children were able to detect ambiguity, school-age children were more likely to do so.
Cognitive predictors of ambiguity detection
Preliminary analyses revealed that school-age children received higher scores than preschool-age children on both the receptive vocabulary task (school-age: M = 20.89, SD =
3.09, preschool-age: M = 13.45, SD = 3.09, t(74) = 6.18, d = 2.41, p < .001) and the
object classification task (school-age: M = 10.64, SD = 1.31, preschool-age: M = 7.70,
SD = 2.56, t(74) = 9.07, d = 1.45, p < .001). Correlations between demographic variables,
cognitive skills and ambiguity detection were also examined (Table 1). Of note, there
was a significant negative correlation between scores on the object classification task
and ratings of how helpful the ambiguous speakers were for the preschool- (r = –.50,
p < .005), but not school-age (r = –.24, p > .05), children. The significant relationship
between preschoolers’ ambiguous speaker ratings and cognitive flexibility performance
remained significant when controlling for their ratings of unambiguous clues, r = –.46,
p <.001.1 This indicates that there is a relationship between cognitive flexibility and preschoolers’ ability to detect communicative ambiguity even when their baseline ratings of
clear statements are controlled.
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Our primary goal was to investigate the extent to which language and cognitive flexibility assist children in detecting ambiguity. A regression analysis was conducted using
children’s mean ratings of the ‘helpfulness’ of the ambiguous clues as the dependent
variable. Recall that better ambiguity detection is reflected through lower ratings of the
ambiguous clue (i.e., demonstrating that children appreciate that an ambiguous clue is
not helpful). A hierarchical approach was used whereby age and TOLD scores were
entered in the first step, followed by the object classification task score in the second
step. This method allowed for an examination of the unique contributions of children’s
cognitive flexibility to their ability to detect ambiguity after controlling for age and
receptive language.
Age and TOLD score (Step 1) together accounted for 31% of the variance in children’s mean ratings of ambiguous clues, adjusted R2 = .31, F (2, 73) = 17.77, p < .001.
The addition of the object classification task (Step 2) significantly improved the model,
R2 change = .04, F = 4.28 (1, 72), p = .04, and accounted for an additional 4% of the variance, β = –.25, t(72) = −2.01, p = .04. This suggests that, while age and receptive language contribute to children’s ability to detect ambiguity, cognitive flexibility also
contributes to successful ambiguity detection.
Interaction analysis. Given that in our preliminary analyses, the correlation between the
object classification task and children’s ratings of ambiguous speakers’ helpfulness was
significant for preschool-age but not school-age children, we examined whether there
was a moderating effect of age. In Step 3 of our regression analysis, we added an interaction term between age and performance on the classification task. There was a trend
towards an interaction between age and object classification task, β = .19, t(71) = 1.63, p
= .11. To decompose this further, we examined the simple effect of the object classification scores for each age group. This revealed a significant effect of object classification
task on children’s ratings of ambiguity for preschool-age, β = –.11, t(71) = −2.61, p =
.01, but not school-age children, β = .04, t(71) = .51, p > .05. This finding suggests a
trend towards a moderating effect of age in that cognitive flexibility plays a role in children’s ability to detect ambiguity at the preschool age, but not at the school age.
Discussion
Although preschool-age children’s difficulty in detecting communicative ambiguity has
been well documented (e.g., Cosgrove & Patterson, 1977; Ironsmith & Whitehurst,
1978), few studies have examined the cognitive skills that support the development of
children’s ability to differentiate between clear and ambiguous messages. The present
work presents initial findings highlighting the importance of cognitive flexibility in preschoolers’ ability to identify messages that contain insufficient information.
Prior to discussing the role of cognitive flexibility, the communicative performance of
children should be noted. Specifically, whereas previous work suggests that ambiguity
detection develops during the school-age years (e.g., Bearison & Levey, 1977; Lloyd
et al., 1998), the present study found that both preschool- and school-age children differentiated between ambiguous and unambiguous statements. Decreased task demands
in the present study may account for the demonstrated success at younger
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ages (suggesting, also, that demands within previous methodologies may have led to
underestimations of preschoolers’ communicative ambiguity detection skills). The present study reduced the complexity of the context, compared to past research, by including fewer stimuli (i.e., three possible referents) that varied on fewer dimensions (i.e.,
colour/shape). For example, the work of Ironsmith and Whitehurst (1978) required children to evaluate four referents that differed along five dimensions, and other researchers
have used more complex stimuli than those of the current study (e.g., Beck et al., 2008;
Lloyd et al., 1998; Robinson & Robinson, 1982; Robinson & Whittaker, 1985; Singer &
Flavell, 1981). Further, the present work reduced the possibility of errors due to performance demands. Specifically, it has been suggested that children’s errors result from an
obligation to respond to the speaker (Ackerman, 1981) and their tendency to take guesses
(Speer, 1984). If this is accurate, the methodology of previous studies could be problematic as children have been directly asked questions as to whether a statement was clear
(Bearison & Levey, 1977; Beck et al., 2008; Singer & Flavell, 1981), or to make a decision about whether to select a referent (Robinson & Whittaker, 1985). The question in
the present work, asked prior to children’s search, enquired about the helpfulness of the
clue with regard to the task at hand (i.e., finding stickers), which may be easier to comprehend than a question about the clarity of a statement in general. Performance demands
may have been decreased thereby assisting children in reflecting on their own knowledge, and allowing them to demonstrate more success.
Central to our main purpose, we found that the development of ambiguity detection skills within the preschool years was facilitated in part by cognitive flexibility.
Specifically, when controlling for age and receptive language, preschoolers who demonstrated more flexibility in their ability to classify objects were found to more proficiently evaluate ambiguous messages as being ‘unhelpful’. This relation remained
even when controlling for preschoolers’ responses on the unambiguous items. We
hypothesize that preschoolers who have more proficient cognitive flexibility skills are
better able to assess the context in which an utterance occurs to determine what kind
of information is required for clarity. To detect ambiguity, children must evaluate a
referential statement by mapping it against the possible referents within the context.
As such, preschoolers who can flexibly evaluate the different dimensional properties
of the referents are better able to determine what information (i.e., what property) is
required to unambiguously identify the intended referent. Previous researchers have
suggested that children’s difficulties in understanding ambiguity may be due to cognitive limitations, such as difficulty understanding that there can be multiple ways to
interpret the same information (Beck et al., 2008; Carpendale & Chandler, 1996).
Within this framework, cognitive flexibility may assist preschool children in thinking
flexibly about stimuli.
As was previously noted, Nilsen and Graham (2012) demonstrated that inhibitory
control skills played a role in preschoolers’ ability to detect communicative ambiguity
from a third person perspective. These authors argue that inhibitory control skills allow
children to inhibit their own perspective so that they are able to appreciate the clarity
of a message from the recipient’s perspective. Given the findings here in this first person task, it may be the case that cognitive flexibility provides further (and unique)
support for children’s detection of ambiguity from a third person perspective. Although
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First Language 34(1)
speculative, cognitive flexibility may both facilitate children’s detection of ambiguity
in a given context, and assist them in switching between their own and the listener’s
perspective.
Our results suggest that cognitive flexibility may be relevant for successful ambiguity
detection in the preschool years, with less contribution as children get older (i.e., significant relations between cognitive flexibility and ambiguity detection were observed for
preschool-age, but not school-age children). For example, it may be that cognitive flexibility is particularly important as children are first developing the skill of detecting communicative ambiguity. Similar to previous work, it appears that executive functioning
may play a different role in facilitating children’s social and communicative development at different ages (e.g., Best, Miller, & Jones, 2009; Hughes & Ensor, 2007; Senn,
Espy, & Kaufmann, 2004).
There has been a longstanding view that children’s language acquisition facilitates
their cognitive flexibility development (e.g., Bruner, 1973; Jacques & Zelazo, 2005;
Piaget, 1964, 1967 as cited by Jacques & Zelazo, 2005; Zelazo, 1999). Our findings
extend this work by demonstrating that a reciprocal relation exists in that cognitive flexibility, in turn, assists preschoolers’ development of other communicative abilities, in this
case, ambiguity detection. Recent research has found cognitive flexibility to be related to
other language abilities such as reading comprehension (Cartwright, 2002), the ability to
verbally reason about false belief tasks (Low, 2010) and the likelihood of using cooperative language (Ciairano, Bonino, & Miceli, 2006). However, not all aspects of communication appear to be supported by cognitive flexibility. For example, Nilsen and Graham
(2009) found that cognitive flexibility did not relate to children’s ability to tailor their
communicative behaviour to the perspective of their conversational partner (whereas
other executive function skills, such as inhibition, did). Although we see cognitive flexibility playing an important role in preschoolers’ ability to detect ambiguity, it may be
that other cognitive skills also play a role. For example, working memory could help
children to assess the context while holding a statement in mind to determine whether
clarifying information is required.
The present findings have implications for our understanding of how children develop
the ability to evaluate messages. They demonstrate that preschoolers with greater cognitive flexibility are better able to determine when a statement is ambiguous (i.e., contains
insufficient information) and is therefore unhelpful in differentiating between possible
referents or interpretations. The current results contribute to the growing literature that
highlights the role that executive functions play in facilitating specific aspects of
communication.
Acknowledgements
We thank the children and parents who participated in the study. Data from this study were presented at the Society for Research in Child Development 2013 Meeting.
Funding
This research was supported by funding from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Grant awarded to Elizabeth Nilsen.
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Note
1. This relation remained significant when controlling for age, receptive language as well as
preschoolers’ unambiguous ratings, r = –.25, p = .04.
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