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Interactions between lexis and discourse in conservation and comprehension tasks*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Chris Sinha and
Bob Carabine
Chris Sinha
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Bob Carabine
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Abstract

Research has indicated that both the lexical content and the discourse structure of the experimental instructions in traditional conservation tasks enhance task difficulty. Investigations of the comprehension of the relational terms more, less, same and different have revealed significant discourse and task demand effects upon comprehension strategies and cast doubt upon strong versions of hypotheses derived from linguistic marking theory. Five experiments were carried out on children aged between 3 and 6 years. Results were consistent with the following claims: (a) young children do not necessarily understand less to mean more, but do confuse the meanings of same and different; (b) function-based strategies of comprehension are superseded in development by attribute-based strategies for relating discourses to represented referents.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , February 1981, pp. 109 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by the Social Science Research Council of Great Britain. The first author's address is: University of Bristol, Department of Psychology, 8–10 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1HH.

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