Two-Year-Olds Distinguish Pretending and Joking

RUNNING HEAD: DISTINGUISHING JOKING AND PRETENDING 1 Parents Produce Explicit Cues which Help Toddlers Distinguish Joking and Pretending

While separate pieces of research found parents offer toddlers cues to express that they are (1) joking and (2) pretending, and that toddlers and preschoolers understand intentions to (1) joke and (2) pretend, it is not yet clear whether parents and toddlers consider joking and pretending to be distinct concepts. This is important as distinguishing these two forms of nonliteral acts could open ...

Parents Produce Explicit Cues That Help Toddlers Distinguish Joking and Pretending

While separate pieces of research found parents offer toddlers cues to express that they are (1) joking and (2) pretending, and that toddlers and preschoolers understand intentions to (1) joke and (2) pretend, it is not yet clear whether parents and toddlers consider joking and pretending to be distinct concepts. This is important as distinguishing these two forms of non-literal acts could open...

Two-year-olds Distinguish Snakes from Nakes but not Trains from Tains

Abstract and Belief-Based Language Differentiate Joking, Pretending, and Literal Toddler-Directed Speech

and Belief-Based Language Differentiate Joking, Pretending, and Literal Toddler-Directed Speech Elena Hoicka ([email protected]) Psychology Department, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK Ruth Campbell ([email protected]) Psychology Department, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK

Two-year-olds differentially disambiguate novel words and facts.

When presented with a pair of objects, one familiar and one unfamiliar, and asked to select the referent of a novel word, children reliably demonstrate the disambiguation effect and select the unfamiliar object. The current study investigated two competing word learning accounts of this effect: a pragmatic account and a word learning principles account. Two-, three- and four-year-olds were pres...