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Children's comprehension of Italian comparative forms and the three-term problem solution*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Camilla Gobbo  and
Franca Agnoli
Camilla Gobbo
Affiliation:
Università di Padova
Franca Agnoli
Affiliation:
Università di Padova
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Abstract

Children aged 7; 6 to 10; 0 were required to solve 2-term relational problems in order to explore developmental changes in the comprehension of Italian positive and negative comparatives. The results indicate that at first children spatially represent the two terms of the positive comparatives in a contrastive-positional way, while in the second phase children represent the terms relationally. Comprehension of negative comparatives is characterized by three phases: a contrastive-positional phase, a presuppositional phase and a relational representation. The older subjects were subsequently divided into two groups based on their previous performance, and required to solve 3-term series problems in order (a) to confirm and extend the result of the first experiment; (b) to examine whether the linguistic comprehension of the comparative was a sufficient and necessary prerequisite for solution of 3-term problems. The developmental sequence of comprehension of comparatives was confirmed. Furthermore, the results suggested how cognitive load in making transitive inferences is influenced by linguistic encoding. The data are discussed in the light of a linguistic model versus a spatial representation model. A developmental version of a spatial representation model is proposed to account for the results.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , February 1983 , pp. 203 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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Footnotes

[*]The authors express their deep gratitude to Diana Pien for comments on the paper. Address for correspondence: first author, Istituto di Psicologia E.E., Facoltà di Magistero, Piazza Capitaniato, 35100 Padova, Italy.
[*]

The authors express their deep gratitude to Diana Pien for comments on the paper. Address for correspondence: first author, Istituto di Psicologia E.E., Facoltà di Magistero, Piazza Capitaniato, 35100 Padova, Italy.

References

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