How children comprehend speech acts and communicative gestures

Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 207–241 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

How children comprehend speech acts and communicative gestures Monica Bucciarelli*, Livia Colle, Bruno G. Bara Centro di Scienza Cognitiva, Universita˜ di Torino via Po, 14-10123 Turin, Italy Received 8 March 2001; received in revised form 13 June 2002; accepted 13 June 2002

Abstract We propose a framework for explaining difference in difficulty of various pragmatic phenomena. In particular, we investigate the ability to comprehend direct, indirect, deceitful, and ironic communicative acts. Our main prediction is that there is a gradation of difficulty in their comprehension. Such a prediction is grounded on the assumptions that the various phenomena involve both mental representations of different complexity and different inferential load. A further prediction is that a communicative act has in principle the same difficulty of comprehension, whether performed through speech acts or communicative gestures. The underlying assumption is that the construction of the meaning of a communicative act is independent of the input modalities. We validate our predictions through an experiment on 160 children, with 40 in each of the following age groups: 2.6 to 3 years, 3.6 to 4 years, 4.6 to 5.6 years, and 6 to 7 years. The results confirm the predicted gradation of difficulty both for the different sorts of speech acts and for the communicative gestures. Also, the results, when broken down by each phenomenon, show that participants performed equally well in speech acts and in communicative gestures. We conclude with a discussion of the possible implications of our results for linguistic and gestural communication research. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Children; Comprehension; Speech acts; Communicative gestures

1. Introduction None of the leading pragmatic theories has investigated linguistic and gestural communication within a coherent developmental perspective. The aim of the present work is to explain the emergence of the ability to comprehend a speech act, as well * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Bucciarelli). 0378-2166/03/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S0378-2166(02)00099-1

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as the ability to comprehend a communicative act performed exclusively through gestures. In an ethological dimension, the execution of a communicative act relies upon both linguistic and extralinguistic means, contemporarily and holistically generated by the actor, and as such perceived by the partner. And, indeed, in a previous study (recapitulated below, Section 2.1) we have investigated the comprehension of different communicative acts performed simultaneously through linguistic and gestural means. However, it is possible to devise situations, either natural or artificial, where the two components are differentiated. A natural situation occurs when a specific deficit selectively impairs one of the two modalities. An artificial situation is the case of the experiment here presented. Our predictions about grades of difficulty in comprehending different phenomena—predictions which are meant to hold in both the linguistic and gestural experimental protocols—are grounded in the complexity of the mental representations and the inferential load involved in the different phenomena. Although the gestural protocol is an artifact, since in everyday life it is rare to deal with communicative acts exclusively performed through gestures,1 a theory that predicts subjects’ performance in the two different conditions should be preferred over theories that do not. Extralinguistic communication, just like linguistic communication, aims to share a communicative meaning with a partner, but does this through the intentional use of just facial expressions, hand gestures, and body movements. Any communicative meaning begins and ends in a mental representation: the reconstruction of an actor’s communicative meaning consists of representational and inferential processes whose input data can be either linguistic or gestural or both. The output of the process is always a mental representation; thus, we assume that the form of the data in input does not affect the representational and inferential processes involved in comprehending a phenomenon. From this assumption, we derive our second prediction: a specific communicative act has the same difficulty of comprehension whether it is realized through linguistic or extralinguistic means. Beyond the mentioned theoretical goals, the need to study linguistic acts and communicative gestures in parallel is enhanced by our ignorance about both the emergence of communicative abilities in abnormal children, and the decay of communicative performance under pathological conditions. Abnormal children show different deficits in the comprehension and production of communicative acts, depending upon the type of cerebral pathology, and the same is true for the decay due to traumatic impairments (children with head injury, closed head injury, hydrocephalus, focal brain damage and children with autism: see Bara et al., 1999a). But the point is that it is hard to understand the deficits when one does not know the normal development. The present work thus has two ambitions: 1. To study in parallel the emergence of linguistic and extralinguistic communication, reunified under a single theoretical paradigm. 1

Sign language is a language and cannot be considered one of these cases.

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2. To offer a baseline against which to confront the abnormal performance, separated with regard to linguistic and extralinguistic conditions.

2. Studies on the development of communicative acts’ comprehension Communicative competence does not coincide with language. Dale (1980) points out that some skills that contribute to communicative competence develop rapidly during the one-word phase, when vocabulary and syntax still are quite limited. However, the intents that children express with their first words are identical to those previously expressed by gestures. As Bates and colleagues (1983) point out, gestures and first words refer to the same kind of content, since they are used within the same script. They appear in interactive routines between the baby and objects and people. For example, babies have words for greetings like ‘bye’ and at the same time have waving gestures that are used to carry out the same stereotyped and defined interactions. Thus, initially children mostly rely on the extralinguistic channel to communicate, and gestures play a major role in their communication. The use of the gestural mode as a free-standing channel of communication follows an inverted U-shaped developmental curve (Nelson, 1985). Gestural communication alone, without an accompanying vocal component, is not an early-emerging behavior: the proportion of acts consisting of gesture alone increases steeply between 8 and 10 months, then declines again at 15 months (Carpenter et al., 1983). From concrete and very detailed gestures, children move to the adults modality, in which gestures provide a support to the linguistic meaning (McNeill, 1985). The transition from gestures to words seems to be accompanied by the development of symbolic gestures after the development of the functional ones [see a study by Sirotkin (1979) on blind, deaf and dumb children]. After the first 3 years of life, gestures become less important for the interpretation of the speaker’s intent at the illocutionary level. The nature of linguistic/gestural combinations in the generation of relational meanings is systematic. Morford and Goldin-Meadow (1992), for example, found that children’s spontaneous word-gesture combinations at the single-word stage consisted mainly of an expressed action word and a gestural reference to a contextual ‘object’ argument (e.g. combining the word give with pointing at the relevant object), but only rarely of a gestural ‘action word’, combined with a verbally expressed ‘object element’. Although gestures and speech refer to the same event, they do not always convey the same information about that event. Interesting examples are the communicative acts in a problem solving situation. Alibali and Goldin-Meadow (1993), for example, point out that even if at first glance, gestures and speech appear to contradict themselves, both modalities describe the same process, each taking a different perspective on the same event. Below, we shall provide a sketch of the literature on the development of the comprehension of communicative acts. It will be clear at the end of the review that, at the present moment, not only do we lack a unifying framework for the development of the ability to comprehend different types of pragmatic phenomena, but we also lack theories that explain the same pragmatic phenomenon, when it is realized

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through either the linguistic or the gestural means. For this reason, the review is organized by the individual pragmatic phenomena. An exception are the studies presented at the end of the section, which represent attempts to explain more than one pragmatic phenomenon. Studies on the comprehension of REQUESTS in very young children show that even children with minimal linguistic skill are able to understand requests. A possible explanation is that children comprehend them as a whole, in that the request forms become conventionally situated (Ervin-Tripp, 1977). Other studies are concerned with the comprehension of DIRECT and INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS. Direct speech acts are those in which a speaker utters a sentence and means exactly and literally what s/he said. In indirect speech acts, the speaker communicates to the hearer more than s/he has actually said, by relying on mutually shared background information and the ability to make inferences on the part of the hearer. Searle (1975) claims that the hearer first attempts to literally interpret the indirect speech act, and only after the failure of such attempt. because of the irrelevance of the literal meaning, tries to find a different meaning, which conveys the primary illocutionary force. Thus, according to the classical approach, an indirect speech act should always be harder to comprehend than a direct one. However, experimental evidence in the developmental literature runs against such an expectation (for a review, see Gibbs, 1994). Children from 2.6 to 3, for example, easily comprehend the illocutionary force of utterances like ‘Would you mind doing that?’ (Reeder, 1980; Bernicot and Legros, 1987; Bara and Bucciarelli, 1998). To sum up, very young children comprehend direct communicative acts performed either through the gestural or the linguistic channel. On the other hand, certain indirect communicative acts are not as easy to comprehend as are direct communicative acts. A psychologically plausible theory ought to be able to explain the difference in easiness of comprehension of conventional indirects and non conventional indirects (see Section 3). Some studies focus on the comprehension of DECEITS. In the literature, children’s ability to detect deception is strictly related to their ability to attribute a false belief to a character. Indeed, the attribution of a deceitful intention to an actor requires an understanding of the communicative act as intentionally false, and that the belief of the partner is manipulated on purpose (Perner, 1991). In a recent study, Tomasello and Call (1999) have investigated children’s ability to deal with the classic Sally-and-Ann false belief task (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), but in a extralinguistic form. The results are consistent with the verbal version of the task: only a few 4 year olds are able to complete the task, whereas most 5 year olds succeed. In Leekman’s (1992) view, a lie/deceit exhibits a progressive structure: a first step involves an actor’s intention to affect the listener’s behavior, while only in the following steps, the intention is to affect the listener’s beliefs. At 18 months, children are able to lie, but even 6 year olds have difficulties with complex deceits (Demorest et al., 1984). The experimental data suggest that a psychologically plausible theory of deceit comprehension ought to account for deceits of different complexity (see Section 3). Other studies are concerned with children’s comprehension of HUMOROUS ACTS. Studies on young infants’ participation in humorous interactions with their

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caretakers show that infants of 7–9 months notice that in certain cases, a behavior with a different goal happens to provoke a humorous interpretation by the adult; subsequently, they repeat the behavior with humorous intent only (Reddy, 1991). Thus, it seems that humor originates from a violated expectation of the canonical outcome of an interactive event (e.g. giving and taking). Other studies have investigated children’s comprehension of linguistic IRONIES. In his seminal work, Grice (1975, 1978) claims that, in order to comprehend an ironic utterance, the hearer assigns a meaning opposite to the one literally expressed by the speaker. Other theories assume that to comprehend irony it is necessary to build complex inferential chains (Sperber and Wilson, 1981, 1986; Clark and Gerrig, 1984; Morgan, 1990; Kumon-Nakamura et al., 1995). Considering the whole of the experimental data on irony in children it seems plausible to distinguish between simple and complex ironies (Keenan and Quigley, 1999). However, the classical theories of irony do not encompass both possibilities (but see Section 3). Yet other studies investigate into the ability to discriminate between humor and deceit. Happe´ (1993) claims that success in second-order false belief tasks is predictive of irony comprehension, and that children are able to detect irony from deceits when they can determine whether a speaker wants to make overt a belief to the hearer. Sullivan and colleagues (1995). instead, think that is the ability to understand whether the speaker knows that the listener knows the truth (second order ignorance judgment) which plays a central role in discriminating lies from jokes. Their results suggest a sharp rise in understanding second order ignorance tasks and lie-joke task between the ages of 5 and 6. Other studies attempt to identify a trend of difficulty in understanding sincere, deceptive, and sarcastic remarks. Demorest and colleagues (1984), for instance, hypothesize that first, children compute an utterance by assuming that the speaker’s belief and communicative purpose are in line with what is said. As a second step, children can understand that the speaker’s beliefs are inconsistent with the speaker’s words; however, the children always interpret this incoherence as a deception. Finally, deception and sarcasm are accurately discriminated. The results of this experiment show that 6 year olds often interpret false remarks as sincere, while 9 and 13 year olds tend to see deliberately false remarks as deceptive; even obviously sarcastic ones are then interpreted as deceits. After the age of 13, the sarcastic purpose is recognized. In the next section, we briefly introduce Cognitive Pragmatics as a unifying framework for different pragmatic phenomena, as well as for the same phenomenon performed through the linguistic and the gestural channels. 2.1. Cognitive Pragmatics Cognitive Pragmatics offers a unified account of different pragmatic phenomena, either realized through the linguistic or the gestural channel (Airenti et al., 1993a,b). The theory, which is developed within the framework of Speech Act theory (e.g. Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969; Grice, 1989), can be roughly summarized around three concepts: the definition provided for standard and non standard communication, the notion of shared belief, and the concept of behavioral game.

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Pragmatic phenomena can be identified both in standard and non-standard communication (Airenti et al., 1993a). Standard communication, which occurs in the form of direct and indirect speech acts involves both comprehension and production of communicative acts through the use of default rules of inference, i.e. rules which are always valid unless their consequent is explicitly denied (cf. Reiter, 1980). The default rules of inference can be applied only when there is no contrast between the mental states overtly expressed by the agents, and the mental states that the partners assume they are privately entertaining (see below). If there is no trace of conflicting representations, the default assumptions of sincerity, well informedness, capacity, etc., lead to the standard path of communication. On the contrary, if partners hold conflicting representations, they follow a non-standard path. Nonstandard communication involves comprehension and production of communicative acts via the blocking of default inferences and the occurrence of classic inferential processes. Examples are deceit (private non-standard) and irony (shared as nonstandard by the agents).2 Airenti et al. (l993a) argue that communication requires shared belief, a concept derived from the notion of mutual knowledge (Lewis, 1969; Schiffer, 1972). Cognitive Pragmatics adopts a subjective view of mutual belief by assuming that each actor has shared belief spaces containing all beliefs the actor assumes as shared with one or more specific partners, or with a group of people, or with all human beings. Thus, it may happen that x believes p to be shared by x and y, whereas y does not believe p to be shared by y and x. Shared belief is considered a primitive, i.e., a specific mental state not reducible to a conjunction of standard private beliefs.3 All the inferences drawn during the phases of understanding are drawn in the space of shared beliefs of x and y. Thus, communication requires that each agent maintain a shared belief space (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). In order to reconstruct the meaning intended by an actor, Cognitive Pragmatics claims that a partner has to recognize the behavior game of which the communicative act constitutes a move. Behavior games can be thought as action plans, i.e. trees of intentions whose leaves are specified either as terminal, precisely defined actions, or as higher-level intentions to be worked out according to the context (Pollack, 1990). In addition, a behavior game specifies the typical situation in which it can be played. The actions prescribed by a behavior game need not be logically necessary; some of them may constitute a conventional, habitual part of the interaction, as is the case of the actions of greetings, typically prescribed by the games governing meetings between persons. The actual actions performed by the agents realize the moves of the behavior game they are playing. The meaning of a communicative action (either linguistic or gestural or, more often, a mix of the two) is fully understood only when it is clear which move of the behavior game it realizes. Thus, communicative acts are moves of 2

In our terminology, non standard phenomena like deceits and ironies involve a contrast between the mental states expressed by the actor and those attributed by the partner. (The notion of contrast in relation to verbal ironies has been widely investigated by Colston and O’Brien, 2000.) 3 Colombetti (1993) provides a formal model of shared belief.

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behavior games; conversely, each move of a behavior game has a communicative value, and can therefore be considered as a communicative act. Consider, for instance, the communicative exchange: (1) A: Let’s invite John to the party. B: Forget about it. By this request, A proposes to B to play the behavior game [ORGANIZING-APARTY], which requires A and B to advance and discuss reciprocal proposals. The recognition of the behavior game bid by the actor does not bind the partner to play his or her role in the game. On the contrary, the partner can decide to accept or reject the proposed game, or try to negotiate a different one, or even let the conversation game be interrupted. Communicative acts find their shared meaning only within the context provided by the behavioral game played by the participants to the communicative exchange. Thus, the difficulty of comprehension of an act depends upon the complexity of the inferences necessary to link the communicative act to a move of the game. It follows that there is no essential difference between a direct speech act (as defined by Searle), and a conventional indirect speech act: both of them are simple acts, immediately linking the move to the game. A difference is instead predicted between conventional indirect speech acts (simple indirects) and non-conventional indirect speech acts (complex indirects). The experimental data support this distinction (see Section 2). Bara and Bucciarelli (1998) investigated the emergence of pragmatic competence in children aged 2.6 to 7 years. In particular, they devised an experimental protocol where actors in video-taped stories perform communicative acts simultaneously through linguistic and gestural means. In this experiment, children are invited to verbally explain the intention of the actors. The results of this experiment confirm the predictions of our present experiment, predictions which we derive from the tenets of Cognitive Pragmatics and some new assumptions (see below). Still following the lead of Cognitive Pragmatics, Bara et al. (2000) devised an experiment to explore the extralinguistic aspects of communication in young children. Thus, their protocol investigates communicative competence independently of language. The experimental protocol includes video-taped stories in which an actor performs a communicative gesture. For each story, participants are invited to choose between four alternative photos, one of which represents the intention of the actor. The results confirm the gradation of difficulty detected in our previous study, with the exception that ironies are harder to understand than deceits only in the case of gestural communication. This result is explained by claiming that ironies rest heavily on linguistic abilities, and therefore are more difficult to understand when performed through gestural means. In our previous studies, we applied the distinction between simple and complex speech acts to direct, conventional indirect, and non-conventional indirect speech acts. However, the distinction should also hold for deceits and ironies, as Bara et al. (1999b) suggest. In fact, in our previous studies, we compared different pragmatic phenomena without taking this distinction into account, such that, for instance, simple ironies were compared with complex deceits in the gestural protocol, which

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made them come out as being easier than deceits. A comparison between different pragmatic phenomena ought to take into account different pragmatic phenomena of the simple sort. The distinction between simple and complex acts applies also to deceits and ironies, as we said before. Deceiving requires the actor to break the rule of sincerity and to construct a suitable strategy to successfully modify the partner’s knowledge (Airenti et al., 1993b). Bara and colleagues (1999b) argue that some deceitful speech acts are simple because they consist in an utterance (not-p) which denies something ( p) that would allow the partner to identify the game that the actor wishes to conceal from the partner. In particular, lies are simple deceits. In contrast, a complex deceitful speech act consists in a communicative act (q) which implies a belief (not-p) leading to a different game than that reached if the partner had had access to the actor’s private belief ( p). Thus, not all deceits have the same complexity; their difficulty depends on the number of inferences necessary to refer the utterance not to the actor’s overt game bid, but to the latter’s private hidden intention. In the Cognitive Pragmatics perspective, irony can be explained on the ground of the agents’ shared knowledge and the contrasting meaning uttered by the actor (Bara, 1999). A statement uttered by an actor becomes ironic when compared with the scenario provided by the knowledge s/he shares with his or her partner. The partner has to infer a further meaning which contrasts with the background against which the ironic utterance stands out. Thus, comprehension of irony requires a partner to appreciate the special nature of the shared belief, and to generate a new meaning, overtly contrasting with that belief. Irony differs from deceit because the actor takes as shared with the partner a belief that contrasts with the ironic utterance (see also Sullivan et al., 1995), whereas in deceit, the actor does not share a private belief. Thus, the same utterance can be considered at the same time an irony or a deceit: it depends on what the actor is sharing with the partner. Bara et al. (1999b) claim that comprehension and production of ironic speech acts develops in two stages; in the first, children start mastering simple irony a´ la Grice: A utters p to mean not-p (see, e.g. studies on young infants by Dunn, 1991; Reddy, 1991). Thus, simple ironies immediately contrast with a belief shared between the agents. In the second stage, children learn to perform more subtle inferences, until they reach the levels of indirect irony (complex irony), as revealed by experimental data (Lucariello and Mindolovich, 1995; Dews et al., 1996). To sum up, Cognitive Pragmatics offers a unifying framework for studying the emergence of linguistic and extralinguistic pragmatic phenomena. We derive some new assumptions from the theory which allow us to make new and more precise predictions concerning the ability to comprehend a communicative act realized through either linguistic or gestural means.

3. A unifying framework for the emergence of linguistic and gestural communication Our study has the aim to overcome the limits of the investigations previously carried out within the Cognitive Pragmatics approach. In particular, we focus on the

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perspective of a third person who observes an actor and a partner in the communicative interaction. 3.1. A methodological caveat In the literature, there is a fuzzy distinction between first-person comprehension and third-person comprehension. First-person comprehension is exemplified by a subject who comprehends a communicative act directed to him- or herself. Third-person comprehension is exemplified by a subject who comprehends what is going on in an interaction between two other agents. Let us assume that in an experimental setting, the relevant common knowledge is available to actor, partner, and observer. The distinction between first and third person comprehension becomes important in two cases: a. the partner (First-person) is personally involved, while the observer (Thirdperson) is not. b. in the case of deceit: the observer shares a private, concealed intention with the actor. This intention remains obscure to the partner to be deceived. We aim at a more precise discrimination of the factors determining the difficulty of comprehension of different pragmatic phenomena by an observer of the communicative interaction. We list such factors in Fig. 1. 3.1.1. Complexity of mental representations Two factors may determine the complexity of the mental representations involved in comprehending a pragmatic phenomenon. 3.1.1.1. Conflicting representations Here, representations involve a difference between what is communicated and what is privately entertained by the actor. In the

Fig. 1. Factors determining the difficulty of comprehension of pragmatic phenomena. The phenomena investigated in our experiment are in bold.

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case of no conflict, we are dealing with standard communication; in the case of conflict, we are dealing with non standard communication. Directs, conventional indirects, and non-conventional indirects are all examples of standard communication, namely involving an actor whose beliefs and communicative purposes are in line with what he or she said. In terms of mental representations, the partner has merely to refer this move to the actor’s behavior game. This is not the case for nonstandard communicative acts, such as deceits and ironies, where the mental representations involved are more complex (see below). It follows that (as predicted) standard phenomena are easier to deal with than nonstandard phenomena. 3.1.1.2. Representations where shared beliefs are exploited Representations involving a belief expressed by an actor which is in contrast with a belief shared with the partner are more difficult to handle than representations that do not involve such a contrast. In the case of comprehension of deceit, the observer recognizes the difference between the mental states that are expressed, and those that are privately entertained by the actor. An uttered statement becomes ironic when, along with this difference, the observer also has to recognize the contrast of the expressed mental states with the scenario provided by the knowledge the actor shares with the partner. The simultaneous activation of the representation of actor’s utterance ( p) and of the contrasting shared belief (not-p) makes ironic statements difficult to entertain for a child. It follows that, as long as we are concerned with simple pragmatic phenomena, deceits should be easier to deal with than ironies. 3.1.1.3. Inferential load The necessity to build a long chain of inferences is what discriminates between complex and simple communicative acts. In standard communication, this is what makes for the difference in difficulty between directs and simple indirects versus complex indirects. In non-standard communication this, too, is what explains the difference in difficulty between simple and complex deceits, and between simple and complex ironies. In our experiment, we investigated only simple pragmatic phenomena of different sorts, with the exception of complex indirects, which involve actors whose belief and communicative purposes are not immediately in line with what was said. Thus, the partner has to construct a chain of inferences in order to refer the move of the actor to the behavior game in question. In other words, complex indirects should be harder to comprehend than simple indirects. What triggers the inferential process which characterizes complex speech acts with respect to simple communicative acts? Our answer, for both standard and nonstandard cases, is: the violation of expectations on behalf of the partner. Different sorts of violations initiate different inferential paths. We assume, with Grice, that actors in communicative exchanges follow the cooperative principle. A communicative act on the part of an actor which is inconsistent with the current set of shared beliefs apparently violates this principle and, therefore, the partner must assume that the actor means something else. In our view, complex acts, whether

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standard or ironic, are a form of non-literal language. In dealing with non-literality, the cues utilized by the partner in deriving the meaning intended by the actor are the expectations being violated, in apparent contradiction to the principle of cooperation. As regards non-standard complex acts of the deceitful sort, the partner has to make a series of inferences in order to reconcile the actor’s expressed meaning with the private beliefs attributed to him or her. All our assumptions hold for both sorts of pragmatic phenomena: speech acts and communicative gestures. But, what do we mean by communicative gestures? Gestures can be defined as movements of the arms and hands in a spatial region reserved for symbolic expression, typically in front of the torso (McNeill, 1998). Some (conventional) gestures are interpretable in the absence of speech; this way of communicating is one of their chief functions, as e.g. in the okay sign. McNeill and Levy (1982) provide a definition of conventional and non-conventional gestures. Conventional gestures have form and meaning established by the conventions of specific communities. In contrast to words, which can be broken down into components, conventional gestures exist as unanalyzed wholes. Non-conventional gestures coincide with the specific linguistic segments to which they link in meaning. They are not interpretable in the absence of speech, are individual and spontaneous, are outside of any special social code that regulates them, and show cross-cultural similarities. In a speech act perspective, there should be no difference in principle between speech and gestures, provided that both actions are communicative. In our terms, this means that communicative gestures—just like utterances—find their meaning only within the context provided by the behavioral game played by the participants in the communicative exchange. Note that the classical distinction between direct and indirect communicative acts never has been applied to extralinguistic communicative acts. Thus, in the literature there are no references to notions like direct and indirect gestures. In our view, it is possible to make such a distinction. In particular, while one may distinguish between direct and complex indirect gestures, the same is not true for direct and simple indirect gestures, as both have a certain degree of conventionality. However, we want to stress the close correspondence of a communicative act of our linguistic protocol with the respective one in the gestural protocol by using the label ‘simple indirects’ also for gestures. What does it mean for a communicative act to be conventional? An act is conventional in relation to the private knowledge of the dialogue participants. Conventional gestures have properties like those of conventional speech acts. Indeed, whoever makes a conventional gesture may have a communicative intention that is not completely conveyed by the meaning conventionally associated with the gesture itself. For instance, a conventional okay sign can be used to sincerely express our attitude towards a successful action performed by an agent, as well as to make an ironic comment to an unsuccessful action performed by another agent. Thus, conventional gestures may be exploited in order to imply a different sense from the usual one. In sum, communicative gestures have different degrees of conventionality that depend on their use in the specific context.

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Further, in our view conventional and non-conventional gestures can be combined in order to convey complex meanings. An example is the use of the conventional signs of ‘I; you; to phone; later’ in a sequence of gestures expressing ‘I-phone-youlater’, as compared to the same signs in a sequence of gestures expressing ‘Youphone-me-later’. Actors may combine conventional gestures to produce innovative sequences having original meanings. More generally, communicative gestures can be simple or complex. Again, all depends on whether or not they are used to make direct reference to the actor’s behavioral game.

4. The experiment Ealier studies (including ours) typically compare a task devised to measure linguistic communicative performance with another task, devised to measure extralinguistic communicative performance. Thus, while the two tasks refer to the same pragmatic phenomenon (e.g., irony), their respective complexity is not focused on. The proper way to compare linguistic and extralinguistic communication is to devise an experiment where the two protocols contain identical material: the same communicative act is realized exclusively via gestures in the gestural protocol and exclusively via a speech act in the linguistic protocol. Our experiment consists of two experimental conditions: linguistic and extralinguistic. In both conditions, participants have to attribute communicative intentions to actors in videotaped stories. Each story occurs in both conditions. In the linguistic condition, the communicative acts were realized through speech acts. Actors were invited to refrain even from simple gesticulation, so as to maintain a clear-cut separation from the other condition. In the extralinguistic condition, the same communicative acts were realized through gestures. Actually, in the construction of this protocol, the actors were invited to gesture in a spontaneous way, in order to realize the same communicative acts of the linguistic protocol. During the protocol construction, two external judges evaluated the naturalness of the gestures produced and their similarity with the corresponding acts in the linguistic protocol. We kept modifying the experimental protocols until the two judges fully agreed on the correspondence in meaning between each speech act and the corresponding gestural act. Some gestures involved in the gestural protocol are conventional, while others are not. However, in neither of the protocols, predictions can be made as to differences in difficulty of comprehension due to assumptions about conventionality. The only exceptions are conventional indirects, which we assumed to be equal in easy of comprehension to directs, as both of them are categorized as simple acts (see Section 3). Further, in the linguistic protocol used in our previous experiments, children were invited to verbally explain what they had understood of the intention of the speaker; this was not done in the gestural protocol. It has to be noted that in asking young children to answer verbally to questions about the pragmatic tasks, one risks to underestimate their early implicit understanding of pragmatic phenomena, due to their still poor linguistic competence. In the present experiment, the answer conditions in

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both types of experimental protocols were identical. in particular, participants did not have to explain the intention of the actor verbally; rather, they were invited to choose among four pictures, of which one represented the intention of the actor in both experimental conditions. The structure of the answer follows the model of the comic strip, in order to make the task familiar to the children. Third, for each of the pragmatic phenomena investigated we devised tasks involving a simple act of the same kind, as our aim was to compare the different phenomena, ceteris paribus, with regard to the simplicity of the communicative act. An exception are complex indirects, for which we predict the relative difficulty of comprehension, as compared to directs and simple indirects. A possible third experimental protocol would have been one in which the communicative acts were simultaneously linguistic and gestural. Such a ‘full’ protocol, where verbal and gestural behaviors are naturally merged, has been used by Bara and Bucciarelli (1998): the same results, for comparable phenomena, were obtained with children of the same age groups. In the present experiment, we keep apart what is ontogenetically different, and which comes together only after the child has mastered communication. Summing up, on the basis of our assumptions, the following three predictions should hold WITHIN MODALITIES, i.e. within both the linguistic and the gestural protocol: (i) standard pragmatic phenomena are easier to comprehend than non standard pragmatic phenomena; (ii) directs and simple indirects are equally easy to comprehend; however, they should be easier than simple deceits, which should be easier than simple ironies; (iii) directs and simple indirects are easier to comprehend than complex indirects. A fourth prediction derives from the following considerations. In most of real-life interactions, the agents perform and encounter communicative acts which are realized both through the linguistic and the extralinguistic modality. Indeed, experimental evidence suggests that gestures add something to the linguistic construction that cannot be reduced to speech. Gestures are not mere echoes of speech; they are co-expressive, rather than redundant (McNeill, 1998). Thus, our experimental conditions are artificial; participants are invited to comprehend pragmatic phenomena either of the linguistic or of the extralinguistic sort. Nevertheless, everyday interaction has a feature in common with our experimental conditions, viz, the necessity to comprehend the intentions of an actor. In our view, the process of comprehension involves constructing mental representations and building chains of inferences. In particular, in our experiment, and considering each pragmatic phenomenon separately, the participants engage in the same mental processes, irrespective of whether they deal with a speech act or with a communicative gesture. Thus, the fourth prediction should hold BETWEEN MODALITIES, i.e. when comparing the linguistic protocol with the gestural protocol: (iv) a pragmatic phenomenon has the same difficulty of comprehension in the two experimental protocols.

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4.1. Participants One hundred and eighty children participated in the experiment: 20 of these were left out because they did not pass the pre-test. The remaining 160 children participated in the experiment, with 40 children in each of the following age groups: 2.6 to 3 years old, 3.6 to 4 years old, 4.6 to 5.6 years old, 6 to 7 years old. In each group, 20 children were randomly assigned to the linguistic protocol, and 20 children were randomly assigned to the gestural protocol. In each protocol, children were balanced by gender. The children attended four kindergartens and four schools in Piedmont, Lombardy, and Tuscany. They were selected on the basis of their teachers’ assessment that they were neither bilingual nor children with learning or behavioral problems. 4.2. Materials We used fifteen videotaped stories with actors being involved in everyday communicative interactions In particular, there were three stories for each of the pragmatic phenomena investigated: directs, simple indirects, simple deceits, simple ironies, and complex indirects. Each story lasts more or less 30 seconds. The videotaped stories are analog in the two protocols. However, the critical act in the linguistic protocol is realized through speech, whereas in the gestural protocol it is realized through communicative gestures (see Appendix). In both protocols, each story involves just one communicative act, namely the one we investigated. Each story involves two or three different characters, chosen so as to be easily understood by very young children. An example of one of the stories involving a simple act is the following: a child is walking with her mother on the road. In the linguistic protocol, the child says: ‘Mum, pick me up’ in the gestural protocol the child tugs the mother’s dress and holds her arms up. For each story, a photograph of the last frame is presented to the participants; typically, in the gestural protocol, the photograph shows the gesture of the actor. In our example, in the linguistic protocol, the photo depicts the child and the mother standing up with their hands joined (see Fig. 2, left-side); in the gestural protocol, it depicts the child holding her arms up (see Fig. 2, right-side). In each picture, above the actor’s head there is a balloon, to be filled in by choosing one among four photographs randomly introduced; only one of them represents the real intention of the character. In our example, in one balloon the mother picks up the child (real intention), in another the mother washes the child’s hands, in another the child is carrying a doll, in yet another the mother looks at some plants (see Fig. 3). The four alternative response-pictures were assembled according to the following criteria. One response is correct, the other three are wrong. In the case of non-standard communicative acts and complex communicative acts only, one of the erroneous alternatives is intended to be misleading, corresponding to a misinterpretation of the actor’s communicative intention. In particular, in ironic communicative acts, the misleading alternative corresponds to the literal meaning of the communicative

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Fig. 2. The photos of the last frames of the stories concerning an indirect request: on the left side the photo in the linguistic protocol, on the right side the photo in the gestural protocol.

Fig. 3. The four photographs presented to the child when dealing with the task in our example.

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act; in the deceitful acts, the misleading alternative corresponds to the event which the actor did not want to occur; and in the case of complex indirects, which always consist of refusals of requests, the misleading alternative corresponds to having understood the act as an acceptance of the request, while the two remaining choices were clear mistakes, having nothing to do with the story. We did not provide misleading alternatives for standard communicative acts (directs and conventional indirects); in these cases, the illocutionary force does not admit a misleading interpretation, because it is expressed in the surface act. 4.3. Procedures The four experimenters frequented the day-care centers and the primary schools of the experimental subjects for a couple of days, in order to socialize with the children. The experiment was carried out individually in a quiet room, in the sole presence of the experimenter and the child. Children were told that they were going to play a game. In the pre-test, the experimenter introduced a picture of Mickey Mouse with a balloon coming out from his head and says: ‘Mickey Mouse invites Minnie to go to the beach’. Then the experimenter shows four alternative Pictures, of which only one represents the communicative intention of Mickey Mouse (i.e. Mickey Mouse and Minnie on the beach), and says to the child: ‘Complete the balloon with Mickey Mouse’s thoughts’. Only children who passed this pre-test went on to the real experiment, which runs as follows. The experimenter shows the participants the videotaped stories, several times if the child desires, and with no time limits. At the end of each story, a photograph of the last picture of the story is presented to the child. As in the pre-test, the photo has a balloon to fill in with the actor’s thought, i.e. the communicative intention. The photos representing the four possible communicative intentions of the actor are shown immediately after each story, and the experimenter says: ‘What does the character thinks? Choose the right one’.4 At the end of the experiment, the child receives a reward (chocolate and biscuits). The scenes were presented in two different random orders, balanced according to age groups and gender of the participants. Tasks involving the same communicative acts never occurred on consecutive runs. All the experimental sessions were audiorecorded. The average time used was 20 minutes.

5. Results The results obtained by the participants in the linguistic and the extralinguistic conditions are summarized in Tables 1 and 2, respectively.

4

The experimenter, before showing children each of the video taped stories, shows them the relative pictures to make sure that they understand what the photographs represent.

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Directs

Simple indirects

Simple deceits

Simple ironies

Complex indirects

Global (%)

2.6–3 3.6–4 4.6–5.6 6–7 Global (%)

63 72 85 90 78

70 82 92 97 85

48 63 60 67 60

32 52 50 75 52

38 42 43 68 48

50 62 66 79 64

Table 2 Percentages of correct responses within the gestural protocol by the four groups of participants GESTURAL PROTOCOL Age groups

Directs

Simple indirects

Simple deceits

Simple ironies

Complex indirects

Global (%)

2.6–3 3.6–4 4.6–5.6 6–7 Global (%)

63 73 82 90 77

63 80 90 93 82

28 67 57 80 58

42 50 38 55 46

22 47 47 70 46

44 63 63 78 62

The results detailed according to the predictions WITHIN MODALITIES are as follows. (i) standard pragmatic phenomena are easier to comprehend than non-standard pragmatic phenomena. The results of the linguistic protocol confirm this prediction: directs and simple indirects are easier to comprehend than simple deceits and simple ironies (81% versus 56% of correct responses, respectively; Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 5.88, tied P value < 0.0001). The same holds for the results of the gestural protocol (79% versus 52% of correct responses, respectively; Wilcoxon test: tied z value 6.59, tied P value < 0.0001). (ii) directs and simple indirects are equally easy to comprehend, they are easier than simple deceits, which are easier than simple ironies. The overall results for the linguistic protocol show that, contrary to our expectations, simple indirects are easier to deal with than directs (Wilcoxon test: z= 2.4, P=0.01). However, both these communicative acts are easier to comprehend than are simple deceits (Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 4.83, tied P value < 0.0001),

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which again are easier than simple ironies (Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 1.98, tied P value < 0.05); these results confirm our expectations. As to the gestural protocol, the overall results fully confirm our expectations. Directs and simple indirects are equally easy to deal with (Wilcoxon test: z= 1.46, P=0.14), and they are easier than simple deceits (Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 5.23, tied P value < 0.0001), which are easier than simple ironies (Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 2.57, tied P value=0.01). The results, broken down by individual age, reveal that in the linguistic protocol, as expected, directs and simple indirects show the same difficulty (Wilcoxon test: z value ranging from 1.6 to 0.97, P value ranging from 0.10 to 0.33). Also, directs and simple indirects are easier to deal with than simple deceits (Wilcoxon test: tied z value ranging from 3.12 to 2.93, tied P value ranging from 0.002 to 0.003), except for the youngest group of participants (Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 1.63, tied P value=0.10). As regards simple deceits, these have the same degree of difficulty as have simple ironies (Wilcoxon test: tied z value ranging from 1.6 to 1.1, tied P value ranging from 0.14 to 0.24). As for the gestural protocol, the results, broken down for each age group, reveal that, as expected, directs are as easy to comprehend as are simple indirects (Wilcoxon test: z value ranging from 0.037 to 1.89, P value ranging from 0.97 to 0.058). Also, directs and simple indirects are more easily comprehended than simple deceits (Wilcoxon test: tied z value ranging from 2.37 to 3.39, tied P value ranging from 0.01 to 0.0007), except for 3.6 to 4 year olds (Wilcoxon test: tied z value 1.25, tied p value=0.21). Finally, simple deceits are easier than simple ironies in the case of 4 and 6 year olds (Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 2.65, tied p value=0.008 and tied z valued 2.56 and tied p value=0.01, respectively), but not for 2 and 3 year olds (Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 1.7, tied p value=0.08 and tied z value= 1.6 and tied p value 0.11, respectively). (iii) directs and simple indirects are easier to comprehend than are complex indirects. The overall results of the linguistic protocol show that directs and simple indirects (81% of correct responses) are easier to comprehend than are complex indirects (48% of correct responses, Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 6.16, tied P value < 0.0001). Similarly, the overall results of the gestural protocol show that directs and simple indirects (79% of correct responses) are easier to comprehend than are complex indirects (46% of correct responses, Wilcoxon test: tied z value= 6.4, tied p value < 0.0001). The same pattern of results holds for the results broken down by age groups in both the linguistic (Wilcoxon test: tied z value ranging from 3.51 to 2.74, tied p value ranging from 0.0005 to 0.006) and the gestural protocol (Wilcoxon test: tied z value ranging from 3.53 to 2.91, tied P value ranging from 0.0004 to 0.0035). Fig. 4 shows an histogram of the global percentages of correct responses to each pragmatic phenomenon in the two experimental conditions.

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Fig. 4. Histogram of the global percentages of correct responses to each pragmatic phenomenon in the two experimental conditions.

The results detailed according to the predictions BETWEEN MODALITIES are as follows. (iv) a pragmatic phenomenon has the same difficulty of comprehension in the two experimental protocols. The comparison between the linguistic and the gestural protocols—broken down by age groups—evinced no significant differences in children’s performance within the two protocols, whether one considers the global performance (64% and 62% of correct responses in the linguistic protocol and the gestural protocol. respectively (Wilcoxon test: z= 1.71, P=0.086), or the performance with simple standard phenomena (81% and 79% of correct responses in the linguistic and gestural protocol, respectively; Wilcoxon test: z= 0.88, p=0,38), or the performance with simple non-standard phenomena (56 and 52% of correct responses in the linguistic protocol and the gestural protocol, respectively; Wilcoxon test: z= 1.25, p  =0.2l). As regards the comparison between the linguistic and the gestural protocols, broken down by age group and pragmatic phenomenon, we detected only one significant difference in simple irony comprehension for 6 year olds: ironies are identified more easily in the linguistic protocol (75% of correct responses) than in the gestural one (55% of correct responses; Wilcoxon test: z= 2.304, P=0.0212). We also carried out an exploratory comparison concerning the predicted relative complexity of the communicative acts within the two protocols. Overall, a comparison of the various groups of participants showed no relevant interactions, that is to say, the predicted difference in difficulty between pragmatic phenomena does not significantly differ in the two protocols. A comparison by age group revealed only two relevant interactions, concerning simple deceits and simple ironies. In particular, in the youngest group—where simple deceits are easier to detect than simple

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ironies in the linguistic protocol (48% versus 32% of correct interpretations, respectively) and simple ironies are easier to comprehend than simple deceits in the gestural protocol (42% versus 28% of correct interpretations, respectively)—the difference in processing difficulty between simple deceits and simple ironies is greater in the linguistic protocol than in the gestural one (Mann–Whitney test: z= 2.35, P < 0.02). In the oldest group—where simple ironies are easier to comprehend than simple deceits in the linguistic protocol (75% versus 67% of correct interpretations, respectively) and simple deceits are easier to comprehend than simple ironies in the gestural protocol (80% versus 55% of correct interpretations, respectively)—the difference in difficulty between the two pragmatic phenomena is greater in the gestural protocol than in the linguistic one (Mann–Whitney test: z= 2.7, P< 0.007). For explorative purposes, we compared the performance of 2 year old children with the performance of 6 year old children in both protocols, and we found out that the increase relative to age in accuracy of performance is greater in the gestural protocol than in the linguistic protocol for simple deceits (Mann–Whitney test: z= 1.975, P 0.0483). Also, the increase in accuracy of performance with age is greater in the linguistic protocol than in the gestural protocol for simple ironies (Mann–Whitney test: z= 2.15, P 0.0315). The experimental tasks measuring the ability to comprehend complex indirect communicative acts as well as simple deceits and ironies, allowed for the possibility for either to perform well or to err by selecting erroneous alternative responses. Some of the erroneous responses were intended to be misleading, while others were plain mistakes. Across the board, a detailed analysis of participants and tasks reveals that misleading responses were produced more frequently than plainly erroneous ones: this holds for both the linguistic protocol (73% versus 27% of the erroneous responses, respectively; Wilcoxon test: tied z=4.64, tied P < 0.0001) and the gestural protocol (78% versus 22% of the erroneous responses, respectively; Wilcoxon test: tied z=5.7, tied P < 0.0001). Similar results are found for the global performance of each age group considered separately. with the exception of the youngest group of participants. The histogram in Fig. 5 shows the percentages of both the misleading and the plain erroneous responses in the linguistic protocol. The misleading erroneous responses were more frequent than the plain erroneous ones for the 3, 4 and 6 year olds (Wilcoxon test: tied z value ranging from 2.8 to 2.3. tied P value ranging from 0.005 to 0.02), but not for 2 year olds (Wilcoxon test: tied z value=0.61, tied P value 0.54). The histogram in Fig. 6 shows the percentages of both the misleading and the plain erroneous responses in the gestural protocol. Misleading erroneous responses occurred more frequently than the plain erroneous ones for 3, 4 and 6 year olds (Wilcoxon test: tied z value ranging from 3.24 to 2.88, tied P value ranging from 0.001 to 0.004), but not for 2 year olds (Wilcoxon test: tied z value=1.4, tied P value=0.15). An analysis of the erroneous responses, broken down by pragmatic phenomenon, reveals that in dealing with simple deceitful communicative acts, participants did not significantly differ in terms of misleading erroneous responses compared to plain erroneous responses. This result holds for the linguistic protocol (62% misleading erroneous versus 38% plain misleading acts; Wilcoxon test: tied z value=1.25, tied

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Fig. 5. Percentages of both misleading and plain erroneous responses in the linguistic protocol by the four age groups of participants.

Fig. 6. Percentages of both misleading and plain erroneous responses in the gestural protocol by the four age groups of participants.

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P value 0.21) as well as for the gestural protocol (62% misleading erroneous versus 38% plain misleading acts; Wilcoxon test: tied z value=1.6, tied P value=0.11), and for the single age groups considered separately. Results are different for the comparison between misleading and plain erroneous responses in tasks concerning ironic and complex indirect communicative acts. As regards ironic communicative acts, the analysis of the results reveals that participants significantly differ in terms of misleading erroneous responses, as compared to plain erroneous ones. This result holds for the linguistic protocol (73% misleading erroneous versus 27% plain misleading acts; Wilcoxon test: tied z value=2.61, tied P value 0.009), as well as for the gestural one (84% misleading erroneous versus 16% plain misleading acts; Wilcoxon test: tied z value=5.22, tied P value =0.0001). However, an analysis by age groups reveals that the same results hold for 3 year olds in the gestural protocol only (Wilcoxon test: tied z value =2.98, tied P value=0.003), for 4 year olds in both protocols (linguistic protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value=2.76, tied P value=0.006; gestural protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value=3.25, tied P value=0.001), and for 6 year olds in both protocols (linguistic protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value=2.76, tied P value=0.006; gestural protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value=3.15, tied P value=0.002). As regards complex indirect communicative acts, the analysis of the results shows that participants significantly differ in terms of misleading erroneous responses compared to plain erroneous ones. This result holds for the linguistic protocol (78% misleading erroneous versus 22% plain misleading acts; Wilcoxon test: tied z value=4.09, tied P value < 0.0001) as well as for the gestural one (81% misleading erroneous versus 19% plain misleading acts; Wilcoxon test: tied z value 4.38, tied P value < .0001). An detailed analysis by age group reveals that the same results hold in both protocols for 3 year olds (linguistic protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value=2.05. tied P value=0.04; gestural protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value =2.65, tied P value =0.008), 4 year olds (linguistic protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value=2.53, tied P value=0.01; gestural protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value =2.3, tied P value =0.02), and 6 year olds (linguistic protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value=2.57, tied P value=0.01; gestural protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value 2.76, tied P value 0.006). However, for 2 year olds we detected no significant difference in the production of the two sorts of erroneous responses (linguistic protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value=0.92, tied P value=0.36; gestural protocol: Wilcoxon test: tied z value =1.19, tied P value 0.23). A possibility which would render our experimental results unreliable is that the experimental subjects might have chosen, among the alternative response pictures proposed for each scenario, the one having the same background as the respective videotaped story. (This possibility has been suggested by one of the referees). And indeed, in devising the experiment we did not take such a possibly relevant variable into account. A post-hoc analysis has revealed that simple deceits and simple ironies all involved alternatives sharing the same background. The situation is different for directs, simple indirects, and complex indirects: they all feature a mixture of pictures with/without the same background as the respective story. The point is that, even if all the backgrounds of the four pictures differ, only the background of the correct

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alternative matches the background of the respective videotaped story, such that the participant could make the correct choice among the alternatives on this basis alone, without having to speculate about the four possibilities. Thus, for each protocol, we have checked whether subjects’ performance can be predicted on the basis of the sort of background involved. The results of this analysis reveal that the hypothesis of the ‘matching-background’ predicts performances which are not the case, while it does not predict actual performances in both experimental protocols. In other words, the background hypothesis is falsified.

6. Discussion and conclusions The results of the experiment globally confirm our predictions. As regards predictions WITHIN MODALITIES, standard communication is easier to comprehend than non-standard communication, both in the linguistic protocol and in the gestural one. Also, in both protocols, directs and simple indirects are equally easy to comprehend, and they are easier than simple deceits, which are easier than simple ironies. Finally, direct and simple indirect communicative acts are easier to comprehend than complex indirect communicative acts in both protocols. Our results are overall consistent with the literature quoted above. In particular, the majority of the youngest children comprehended requests, whether performed by linguistic or extralinguistic means (Dore, 1975; Ervin-Tripp, 1977). Also, in both experimental protocols we detected a noteworthy difference in 3 years olds’ and 4 year olds’ comprehension of deceits; this result parallels the results obtained by Sodian (1991) and Russell et al. (1991). Also, consistent with Reddy’s (1991) study, we found a considerable difference in the ability of 2.6–3 year olds and 3.6–4 year olds with regard to comprehending ironic communicative acts. Such a difference is bigger in the linguistic protocol than in the gestural one (see below for a possible explanation). It is worth noticing that a similar difference showed up between 4.6– 5.6 year olds and 6–7 year olds. This is consistent with the results obtained by Lucariello and Mindolovich (1995): 6 year old children seem to fully grasp the intentions of ironic exchanges, and they are even able to produce ironic endings of stories. Finally, our results are in line with previous studies showing that 2–3 year old children comprehend simple indirect speech acts just as well as they do direct ones (Reeder, 1980; Bara and Bucciarelli, 1998). The relevance of our results with respect to what has been described in the earlier literature on the comprehension of direct and indirect communicative acts is that we provide a unified framework in which the relative difficulty of one communicative act with respect to another can be explained on the basis of what was assumed in order to explain the difference in difficulty of comprehension of other pragmatic phenomena. Some of our experimental results are not in line with our expectations. In particular, the overall results show that, in the linguistic protocol, conventional indirects are easier to comprehend than are directs. A possible explanation is that conventionality is a shortcut, and comprehending a conventional communicative act does not require any inference. This conventionality, which is a measure of how

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often a particular expression has been encountered and used by the child, would lead the listener to create an automatic association between the communicative expression and the conventional meaning that such an expression holds. A second unexpected result is that for the youngest children, directs and simple indirects are not easier to comprehend than are simple deceits. Also, while simple deceits are not easier to comprehend than simple ironies, for the youngest children they are equally difficult when performed through extralinguistic means. A possible explanation for this difficulty may be found in the experimental methodology. In order to solve each task, children had first to assign a meaning to four alternative pictures. Second, they had to choose the one meaning which reflects the communicative intention of the act. This kind of task might be too complex for young children. Globally, the results also reveal that a pragmatic phenomenon has the same difficulty of comprehension, whether is realized through linguistic or extralinguistic means. In particular, results BETWEEN MODALITIES reveal no differences in children’s performance in the two protocols, neither for the phenomena across the board, nor for standard and non-standard phenomena or for the single phenomena considered separately. Irony is an exception, but only for the 6 year olds, who find it easier to comprehend simple irony within the linguistic protocol than within the gestural one. The ability to comprehend both simple deceits and simple ironies increases with age; similarly, their relative difficulty is subject to change. In particular, in very young children the requirement to deal with gestural means seems to level out this difference; in contrast, their still poor linguistic abilities accentuates the difference in difficulty (irony is also a linguistic matter). Older children, instead, who have acquired more sophisticated linguistic means, can exploit these to comprehend simple ironies. Such linguistic means are not so relevant in comprehending simple deceits performed through gestures; this is why the relative difference in difficulty between simple deceits and simple ironies is greater in the gestural protocol for older children. Also, an explorative comparison of the performance of 2 year olds and 6 year olds reveals that, with age, the comprehension of simple deceits improves more in the gestural protocol than in the linguistic one. In contrast, the age-related improvement in comprehending simple ironies is greater in the linguistic protocol than in the gestural one. Our explanation for the first result (deceits are easier in extralinguistic than in linguistic mode) is that the gestural channel allows the deceiver to share knowledge about his or her intention with the observer, while keeping the person to be deceived in the dark. Irony, instead, is usually meant to be comprehended by the person to whom it is directed; it needs specific timing in order to succeed. Within these constraints, an ironic speech act might be more efficacious than a corresponding ironic communicative gesture; the latter requires contact conditions such as visual attention, which could be hard to obtain instantly for actor and partner. A further question concerns the erroneous responses produced by the participants to non-standard and complex acts. Considered overall, the results confirm that the misleading erroneous responses were favored with respect to the plain erroneous responses by all groups of children, except for the 2 year olds’ group. A possible

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explanation is that very young children, when they fail to grasp the intentional meaning, have no cues to come even close. Older children, instead, make more sophisticated attempts to grasp the intentional meaning of non standard and complex acts. This explanation holds for both protocols and for each pragmatic phenomenon considered separately. Thus, it constitutes further evidence in favor of our hypothesis that the mental representations and the inferential processes involved in understanding communicative acts are not affected by the nature of the communicative channel (linguistic or extralinguistic). To what extent can our unifying framework explain these results? Our explanation relies on the complexity of the mental representations involved in the different pragmatic phenomena. In fact, it is on this basis that the simple pragmatic phenomena we have investigated differ. Our assumption is that the ability to deal with mental representations of increasing complexity increases with age and therefore, for instance, the ability to comprehend simple deceits as well as simple ironies similarly increases with age. Also, our assumptions lead to the prediction that simple deceits should always be easier to comprehend than simple ironies. As a matter of fact, the results for our youngest and oldest children do not confirm this prediction: the experimental data reveal an opposite situation (irony is easier to comprehend than deceit), both within the gestural protocol of the youngest participants and within the linguistic protocol of the oldest participants. These results are mitigated by the fact that the predicted difference in difficulty in the linguistic protocol is greater than the unpredicted difference in the gestural protocol for the youngest participants. Also, the predicted difference in difficulty in the gestural protocol is greater than the unpredicted difference in the linguistic protocol for the oldest participants. Our tentative explanation is that simple deceits are easy to detect for very young children in that they develop strategies for dealing with them. Simple ironies, instead, would be easy to understand for older children, because such ironies have become conventionalized. Also, it is plausible that some of the abilities involved in the ability to comprehend irony develop with age. An example is the ability to use memory cues presented by the ironic utterance that direct perceivers’ attention to the situational disparity (between speakers’ beliefs, desires, or expectations and actual outcomes) and perceives’ sensitivity to a situational disparity of small size (Gerrig and Goldvarg, 2000). More generally, whenever differences were observed in difficulty of comprehension of the same pragmatic phenomenon, realized through different channels (linguistic or extralinguistic), the experimental results might have been interpreted as being influenced by the nature of the data used as input to the comprehension process. As we detected no difference when comparing the two protocols, our results suggest that the type of communicative input (either linguistic or extralinguistic) does not affect the process of attribution of intentions. This interpretation is consistent both with studies on communicative abilities in normal individuals and with studies on communicative impairments. As regards the former, some studies focus on the analogies between speech acts and communicative gestures. Studies on language acquisition, for example, demonstrate that with the increase of the vocabulary, the complexity of the grammar increases, too (Elman et al., 1996). Along the same lines,

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the results of a series of studies suggest that with the increase of the gestural vocabulary, the complexity of the gestural grammar increases as well. Studies on deaf children, for example, show that gestures, just like speech, have a grammar, even when there is no possibility to develop an oral language; sign languages are perfect examples of gestures becoming signs (see Bonvillian and Folven, 1993). Further, Goldin-Meadow et al. (1996) have compared speech acts and gestures in production tasks in adult individuals without specific deficits; they found that when communication is based on gestures only, without the aid of speech, this modality assumes all constraints characteristic of linguistic expression. In other words, gestures acquire grammatical form and regular syntactic rules. In speech situations, however, gestures do not acquire a grammar as complex as that used by individuals who mainly use the linguistic mode of expression. In such cases, gestures cannot be considered symbolic signs (see Volterra and Erting, 1990).5 Some of the studies on communicative impairments, instead, focus on the tight bond between language and communicative gestures. In particular, they show that gestures and speech are affected in parallel ways by neurological damage in aphasic patients (Bates et al., 1983). Consistently, the literature on right-hemisphere injuries in children aged from 10 to 17 months reveals that they are at greater risk for delays in acquiring both word comprehension and the gestures that normally precede and accompany the onset of language (Bates et al., 1997). Also, studies focussing on early indicators of risk for delay in language acquisition show that for late talkers at 20 months, the best 13-month predictors are gestures (Thal and Katich, 1996). In our view, the framework we provide is relevant for our understanding of both pathological development and decay of communicative abilities. There are three main reasons. First, our framework allows to discriminate the difficulty of comprehension of different communicative acts along two dimensions: the complexity of the mental representations involved (cf. the distinction between simple standard phenomena, simple deceits, and simple ironies), and the inferential load involved (cf. the distinction between simple and complex phenomena). Thus, both pathological development and decay of communicative abilities may be better characterized along these two different dimensions. A main consequence of such a fine-grained understanding of communicative abilities is the possibility to adopt proper strategies of rehabilitation for the specific communicative deficits, as well as a more efficient way to communicatively interact with impaired individuals. Obviously, our study has evident limitations. A major one is that we have studied the ability to comprehend communicative acts performed in an environment without background noise. That is, the communicative acts were presented to the child in the absence of other potentially relevant information for the communicative interaction. The ability to select information from the context within which communication occurs has not been considered in our study. Moreover, our study is limited to simple 5 Theoretical and functional transitions from spontaneous gestures to lexicalizsed signs have been investigated by McNeill (1993), who is interested in considering the relationship between gestures and sign languages.

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communicative acts, whereas in everyday interactions we usually deal with complex communicative acts. We have stated that complex acts involve long chains of inferences; however, we have not defined, for the moment, a way to estimate different degrees of difficulty of comprehension between complex communicative acts of the same sort, such as two complex ironies. Also, in daily life interaction, communicative acts of a certain kind may be performed with the intention to perform communicative acts of a different kind. Thus, for instance, an ironic act might be performed with the aim to deceive a partner in the communicative exchange. The scenario we have depicted for the different sorts of communicative phenomena is simplified with respect to their effective occurrence in the situated discourse of real life. Nonetheless, we think that our study is a necessary step in understanding the sort of mental representations and mental processes involved in the comprehension of communicative acts. The results of our experiment can easily find a place within the proposed general framework, where comprehension of speech acts and communicative gestures seem to share the most relevant mental processes. Indeed, our results suggest the possibility that any communicative act is modality independent, and that the degree of difficulty of comprehension depends upon the mental representations and inferential processes involved in it.

Acknowledgements This research has been supported by Ministry of Education (Quantitative and qualitative instruments for the analysis of the relationship in psychotherapy; protocol number 2001115311). We are grateful to Gabriella Airenti, Maurizio Tirassa and Jacob Mey for their helpful criticisms on earlier versions of this paper.

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Appendix The following is a description of the video-typed stories used in our experiment and the balloons going with each of them. The balloons numbered ‘1’ are the choices considered correct: the balloons numbered ‘2’, ‘3’, and ‘4’ are erroneous choices. As regards complex indirects, deceits and ironies, the erroneous alternative in ‘2’ is intended to be misleading. A1. Simple acts A1.1. Directs  A child (A) is walking with her mother (B) on the road Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘Mum, pick me up’ A tags on B’s dress and holds her arms up

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4) 

B picks A up B washes A’s hands A is carrying a doll B looks at some plants

A is sitting in front of her desk holding a telephone receiver, B comes in Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘Please, take a seat’ A points to a chair for B to sit down on

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4) 

A and B are sitting B is sitting on the floor A is combing her hair B is lying on a sofa

A boy (A) opens a car door for a girl (B) Linguistic: Extralinguistic:



A: ‘Pop in’ A gestures with his arm for B to get into the car

Balloons: 1) 2)

B gets into the car A gets into the car

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3) 4)

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B plays with a doll A makes a phone call

A1.2. Simple indirects

 Two girls (A and B) are in a room. A is reading a book. B opens the window: Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘Sorry, could you close the window?’ A calls B’s attention and points to the window

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)



B closes the window B strokes a dog A and B play Scrabble A eats an apple

Two girls (A and B) are sitting around a table Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘Excuse me, would you pass me the water?’ A points to the bottle for B to pass

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)



B passes A the water B pours himself some water A eats some chips A and B play cards

A girl (B) comes in and shuts the door. A boy (A) carrying a bag arrives Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘B could you open the door?’ A kicks on the door with his foot

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)

B opens the door A goes away with his bag A and B are hanging pictures B takes a bicycle

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A2. Simple deceits  In a classroom, children are doing math exercises. One child (A) is holding a book to hide the comic strips inside. The teacher (B) comes over, suspiciously. Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

B: ‘Are you doing the exercises?’ A: ‘Yes. 1 am’ A hides the comics under the desk and shows the teacher her book

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)



B pats A’s head with approval A is reprimanded A, C and D are playing together A and C are reading a comic

A and C are playing with some pillows, A knocks a vase over. A boy (B) hears the crash and comes in Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

B: ‘Who did that?’ A: ‘He did’ B looks at them with a questioning look and A points to C

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)



B reprimands C B reprimands A A and C test their strength in arm wrestle B reads a newspaper

Two children are playing hide and seek. B counts and C goes to hide behind the door. A third child (A) helps C to hide. C asks A not to reveal his hiding place. Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

B: ‘Where is C?’ A: ‘Under the table’ B looks at them with an interrogative expression and A points under the table.

Balloons: 1) 2)

B looks under the table B looks behind the door

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A and C play together C is counting

A3. Simple ironies  Two children A and B are playing with lego. Together are building a fairly high tower. B knocks the tower over. Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘Well done’ A claps

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)



A is sad A is happy B is drawing A and B are playing the piano

Two girls (A and B) are sitting at a table. B has two sweets, she is eating one of them. A asks if she can have the other one. B eats the second sweet and gives A the paper. Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘That’s nice!’ A strokes B on the back.

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)



A sticks her tongue out at B A kisses B A is cooking A and B are hanging out the laundry.

Two boys are sitting in a park. B is eating a snack and A is reading a newspaper. The snack drops on the ground. B picks up it and goes on eating it. Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘Uhm, that’s good’ A presses his cheek with his finger (Italian version of patting one’s stomach)

Balloons: 1) 2)

B throws the snack away B eats the snack

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3) 4)

A drinks some water A and B open a door.

A4. Complex acts

A4.1. Complex indirects  A child (B) is walking with his sister (A). They stop in front of a doll shop Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

B: ‘Would you get me that game?’ A: ‘We don’t have any money’ B points insistently at a game A shows him her empty purse

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)



A and B go away B has the game in his hands A laces up B’s shoes A gets a chocolate from the chocolate machine

A girl (A) is sitting at a table studying, whilst another girl (B) is hammering Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

A: ‘Excuse me, I am studying’ A calls B’s attention by pointing to her book

Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)



B stops hammering B hammers A and B drink some tea A is drawing

A girl (A) and a boy (B) are peeling potatoes. Another girl (C) comes holding a ball Linguistic: Extralinguistic:

C: ‘Will you come and play with me?’ A: ‘He must help me’ C shows B the ball, A stops B from getting up by holding his arm.

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Balloons: 1) 2) 3) 4)

B helps A B and C play with the ball A washes up B plays the guitar

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