Children’s Attention to Emotional Prosody: Pragmatic Adjustment in Response to Speaker Conventionality
| dc.contributor.advisor | Graham, Susan A. | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Chambers, Craig G. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Thacker, Justine Marie | |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | Pexman, Penny M. | |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | Sedivy, Julie | |
| dc.date | 2019-06 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2018-11-21T17:19:04Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2018-11-21T17:19:04Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018-11-19 | |
| dc.description.abstract | In this dissertation, I examined whether children will pragmatically adjust their expectations about a speaker’s referential intent, depending on whether the speaker provided conventional or unconventional descriptions. In Chapter 2, 4- and 5-year-old children were introduced to one of two possible speakers: (1) conventional speaker who demonstrated congruent use of linguistic and affective cues; or (2) unconventional speaker who demonstrated incongruent use of these cues and who was described as saying “things in a strange way”. Test trials consisted of displays containing pairs of objects that belonged to the same category, but that differed in terms of their likelihood of association with negative or positive emotional prosody (broken doll/intact doll), accompanied by referentially ambiguous instructions (“Look at the doll”) spoken in either a positive- or negative-sounding voice. Results indicated that children in the conventional speaker condition directed a greater proportion of looks to the negative object during negative emotional prosody trials, compared to positive emotional prosody trials. In contrast, there was no effect of emotional prosody in the unconventional speaker condition. In Chapter 3, I further examined the extent to which children will suspend their use of emotional prosody for an unconventional speaker. In Experiment 2, the experimenter's description of the speaker's trait was replaced with a neutral statement, but examples of the speaker’s incongruent use of linguistic and affective cues were retained. Again, children suspended their use of emotional prosody as a cue to referential intent. In Experiments 3 and 4, children were introduced to two different versions of an unconventional speaker that varied in terms of how related their unconventionality was to their use of emotional prosody. Results demonstrated that speaker unconventionality that was closely related to emotional expression had an effect on children’s use of emotional prosody. However, when speaker unconventionality was unrelated to emotional expression, 5-year-old, but not 4-year-old, children returned to their original pattern of looking whereby the used emotional prosody to resolve referential intent. This selectivity in response to different speakers provides compelling evidence that social-pragmatic reasoning underlies preschoolers’ interpretation of emotional prosody. Chapter 4 summarizes and explores the aforementioned findings in greater detail. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Thacker, J. M. (2018). Children’s Attention to Emotional Prosody: Pragmatic Adjustment in Response to Speaker Conventionality (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/34517 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/34517 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1880/109188 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Arts | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Graduate Studies | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Calgary | en |
| dc.publisher.place | Calgary | en |
| dc.rights | University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. | |
| dc.subject | Emotional prosody | |
| dc.subject | Spoken language comprehension | |
| dc.subject | Speaker conventionality | |
| dc.subject | Pragmatic inference | |
| dc.subject | Referential intent | |
| dc.subject | Eye-tracking | |
| dc.subject.classification | Linguistics | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Psychology | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Psychology--Cognitive | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Psychology--Developmental | en_US |
| dc.title | Children’s Attention to Emotional Prosody: Pragmatic Adjustment in Response to Speaker Conventionality | |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Clinical Psychology | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Calgary | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | |
| ucalgary.item.requestcopy | true |