Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-11T16:54:17.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sensitivity to conversational maxims in deaf and hearing children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

LUCA SURIAN ,
MARIANTONIA TEDOLDI  and
MICHAEL SIEGAL
LUCA SURIAN*
Affiliation:
University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy
MARIANTONIA TEDOLDI
Affiliation:
University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
MICHAEL SIEGAL
Affiliation:
University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy and University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Luca Surian, Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Corso Bettini, 31, 38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy. e-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We investigated whether access to a sign language affects the development of pragmatic competence in three groups of deaf children aged 6 to 11 years: native signers from deaf families receiving bimodal/bilingual instruction, native signers from deaf families receiving oralist instruction and late signers from hearing families receiving oralist instruction. The performance of these children was compared to a group of hearing children aged 6 to 7 years on a test designed to assess sensitivity to violations of conversational maxims. Native signers with bimodal/bilingual instruction were as able as the hearing children to detect violations that concern truthfulness (Maxim of Quality) and relevance (Maxim of Relation). On items involving these maxims, they outperformed both the late signers and native signers attending oralist schools. These results dovetail with previous findings on mindreading in deaf children and underscore the role of early conversational experience and instructional setting in the development of pragmatics.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , September 2010 , pp. 929 - 943
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This paper was prepared with support from a Leverhulme Trust Research Interchange Grant and from a 2005 PRIN grant from the Italian government. Michael Siegal is supported by an EU Sixth Framework Marie Curie Chair and a grant from the Fondazione Benefica Kathleen Foreman-Casali. We wish to express our appreciation to school staff and children for their kind collaboration. Thanks are due to Michele Grassi and Laura Iozzi for assistance in data collection and analysis and to two anonymous reviewers and the action editor for their helpful comments.

References

REFERENCES

Bishop, D. V. M. (2003). The Test for Reception of Grammar, version 2 (TROG-2). London: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Brownell, M. D., Trehub, S. E. & Gartner, G. M. (1988). Children's understading of referential messages produced by deaf and hearing speakers. First Language 8, 271–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caselli, M. C., Maragna, S. & Volterra, V. (2006). Linguaggio e Sordità: Gesti, segni e parole nello sviluppo e nell'educazione. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Courtin, C. & Melot, A.-M. (2005). Metacognitive development of deaf children: Lessons from the appearance–reality and false belief tasks. Developmental Science 8, 16–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eskritt, M., Whalen, J. & Lee, K. (2008). Preschoolers can recognize violations of the Gricean maxims. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 26, 435–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Everhart, V. S. & Marschark, M. (1988). Linguistic flexibility in signed and written language. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 46, 174–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grice, H. P. (1975) Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L. (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, P. L., de Rosnay, M. & Pons, F. (2005). Language and children's understanding of mental states. Current Directions in Psychological Science 14, 69–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, R., Holmes, S. & Woll, B. (1999). Assessing BSL Development: Receptive Skills Test. London: Forest Books.Google Scholar
Jeanes, R. C., Nienhuys, T. G. & Richards, F. W. (2000). The pragmatic skills of profoundly deaf children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Communication 5, 237–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lichtert, G. F. & Loncke, F. T. (2006). The development of proto-performative utterances in deaf toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49, 486–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meins, E., Fernyhough, C., Wainwright, R., Gupta, M., Fradley, E. & Tuckey, M. (2002). Maternal mind-mindedness and attachment security as predictors of theory of mind understanding. Child Development 73, 1715–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meristo, M., Falkman, K. W., Hjelmquist, E., Tedoldi, M., Surian, L. & Siegal, M. (2007). Language and theory of mind reasoning: Evidence from deaf children in bilingual and oralist environments. Developmental Psychology 43, 1156–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moeller, M. P. & Schick, B. (2006). Relations between maternal input and theory of mind understanding in deaf children. Child Development 77, 751–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, P. B., Adamson, L. B. & Bakeman, R. (2008). Toddlers' joint experience facilitates preschoolers' acquisition of theory of mind. Developmental Science 11, 847–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nicholas, J. G. & Geers, A. E. (2003). Communication of oral deaf and normally hearing children at 36 months of age. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 40, 1314–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noveck, I. A. & Reboul, A. (2008). Experimental pragmatics: A Gricean turn in the study of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12, 425–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, C. C. (2004). Theory of mind development in oral deaf children with cochlear implants or conventional hearing aids. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45, 1096–1106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peterson, C. C. & Siegal, M. (1998). Changing focus on the representational mind: Deaf, autistic and normal children's concepts of false photos, false drawings and false beliefs. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 16, 301–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, C. C. & Siegal, M. (1999). Representing inner worlds: Theory of mind in autistic, deaf, and normal hearing children. Psychological Science 10, 126–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, C. C., Wellman, H. M. & Liu, D. (2005). Steps in theory-of-mind development for children with deafness of autism. Child Development 76, 502–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pizzuto, E., Ardito, B., Caselli, M. C. & Volterra, V. (2002). Cognition and language in Italian deaf preschoolers of deaf and hearing families. In Marschark, M., Clark, D. & Karchmer, M. (eds), Cognition, context, and deafness, 49–70. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar
Ruffman, T., Slade, L. & Crowe, E. (2002). The relation between children's and mothers' mental state language and theory-of-mind understanding. Child Development 73, 734–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Russell, P. A., Hosie, J. A., Gray, C. D., Scott, C., Hunter, N., Banks, J. S. & Macaulay, M. C. (1998). The development of theory of mind in deaf children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 39, 903–910.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schick, B., de Villiers, P., de Villiers, J. & Hoffmeister, R. (2007). Language and theory of mind: A study of deaf children. Child Development 78, 376–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Siegal, M., Iozzi, L. & Surian, L. (2009). Bilingualism and conversational understanding young children. Cognition 110, 115–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Siegal, M. & Peterson, C. C. (2008). Language and theory of mind in atypical children: Evidence from studies of deafness, blindness, and autism. In Sharp, C., Fonagy, P. & Goodyer, I. (eds), Social cognition and developmental psychopathology, 79–110. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Siegal, M. & Surian, L. (2004). Conceptual development and conversational understanding. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, 534–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Siegal, M. & Surian, L. (2007). Conversational understanding in young children. In Hoff, E. & Shatz, M. (eds), Handbook of Language Development, 304–323. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Siegal, M. & Varley, R. (2002). Neural systems involved in ‘theory of mind’. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3, 463–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Silvestre, N., Ramspott, A. & Pareto, I. D. (2007). Conversational skills in a semistructured interview and self-concept in deaf children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 12, 38–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (2002). Pragmatics, modularity and mindreading. Mind and Language 17, 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Surian, L. (1995). Children's ambiguous utterances – a reexamination of processing limitations on production. Journal of Child Language 22, 151–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Surian, L., Baron-Cohen, S. & van der Lely, H. (1996). Are children with autism deaf to Gricean maxims? Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 1, 55–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Surian, L., Caldi, S. & Sperber, D. (2007). Attribution of beliefs by 13-month-old infants. Psychological Science 18, 580–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Surian, L. & Job, R. (1987). Children's use of conversational rules in a referential communication task. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 16, 369–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Surian, L. & Siegal, M. (2001). Sources of performance on theory of mind tasks in right hemisphere-damaged patients. Brain and Language 78, 224–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Woolfe, T., Want, S. C. & Siegal, M. (2002). Signposts to development: Theory of mind in deaf children. Child Development 73, 768–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed