Conceptual Factors Influence Children's Distributivity Bias

ABSTRACT

Sentences such as “The girls read a book” can lead to multiple interpretations: They could be reading the same book (collective) or they could each be reading their own book (distributive). In ambiguous contexts, adults prefer the collective interpretation, and preschool children show a slight bias for a distributive interpretation. The current research investigated whether conceptual factors (number of actors) influences interpretations of these kinds of predicates. The data with children show a stronger collective bias when there are four actors compared to two actors. This may be because children are more likely to conceptualize groups of four (vs. two) as sets rather than collections of individuals. These data are discussed with reference to research on visual and conceptual integration abilities, showing that children lag behind in their ability to combine components into a whole in comparison to parsing objects into their component parts.

KEYWORDS:

• Collectivity
• distributivity
• language acquisition
• pluralities
• semantics

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the parents, children, childcare centers, adult participants, and the research assistants who made this research possible: Michael Allman, Samantha Finney, Kayla Palmiter, Abigail Noblet, and Brandy Plunkett.

Note

Author notes

Nikole D. Patson, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University at Marion; Julie M. Hupp, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University at Newark.

Notes

1. All stimuli are available from the first author by request.