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Sensitivity to conversational maxims in deaf and hearing children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

LUCA SURIAN ,
MARIANTONIA TEDOLDI  and
MICHAEL SIEGAL
LUCA SURIAN*
Affiliation:
University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy
MARIANTONIA TEDOLDI
Affiliation:
University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
MICHAEL SIEGAL
Affiliation:
University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy and University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Luca Surian, Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Corso Bettini, 31, 38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy. e-mail: luca.surian@unitn.it.
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Abstract

We investigated whether access to a sign language affects the development of pragmatic competence in three groups of deaf children aged 6 to 11 years: native signers from deaf families receiving bimodal/bilingual instruction, native signers from deaf families receiving oralist instruction and late signers from hearing families receiving oralist instruction. The performance of these children was compared to a group of hearing children aged 6 to 7 years on a test designed to assess sensitivity to violations of conversational maxims. Native signers with bimodal/bilingual instruction were as able as the hearing children to detect violations that concern truthfulness (Maxim of Quality) and relevance (Maxim of Relation). On items involving these maxims, they outperformed both the late signers and native signers attending oralist schools. These results dovetail with previous findings on mindreading in deaf children and underscore the role of early conversational experience and instructional setting in the development of pragmatics.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , September 2010 , pp. 929 - 943
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

[*]

This paper was prepared with support from a Leverhulme Trust Research Interchange Grant and from a 2005 PRIN grant from the Italian government. Michael Siegal is supported by an EU Sixth Framework Marie Curie Chair and a grant from the Fondazione Benefica Kathleen Foreman-Casali. We wish to express our appreciation to school staff and children for their kind collaboration. Thanks are due to Michele Grassi and Laura Iozzi for assistance in data collection and analysis and to two anonymous reviewers and the action editor for their helpful comments.

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