{"pk":49467,"title":"Preschoolers Compute Literal and Pragmatic Meanings of Conditionals with Contextual Support","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Understanding conditional inferences is fundamental to human reasoning, allowing us to predict the consequences of actions. For instance, the conditional, \"If you eat your broccoli, you'll get a candy\" can be interpreted literally, meaning eating broccoli is one way to get a reward, or pragmatically, implying it is the only way. Past studies show school-aged children (ages 7-12) struggle to arrive at literal meanings but, interestingly, compute adult-like, pragmatic interpretations at this age. A key limitation of past research is the lack of testing in contexts that favor literal meanings. We conducted two studies to examine whether children can derive literal interpretations when supported by context, focusing on scenarios where adults prefer literal over pragmatic interpretations. We found that preschoolers, as young as 4 years old, are adult-like in computing literal meanings of conditionals when contextually supported, and also can arrive at pragmatic meanings of conditionals. These findings inform theories of logical reasoning and implicature acquisition.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Linguistics; Language acquisition; Pragmatics; Reasoning; Developmental analysis"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11s6q9z5","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Ebru","middle_name":"","last_name":"Evcen","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California San Diego","department":""},{"first_name":"David","middle_name":"","last_name":"Barner","name_suffix":"","institution":"UC San Diego","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T13:00:00-05:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49467/galley/37429/download/"}]}