The stories we tell,the reputations we form: Narrative identity and person perception

We explored the degree of consensus and accuracy in observers’ ratings of targets’ traits and autobiographical narratives. Targets narrated life high, low, and turning points and reported their personality traits. The conceptual content of these stories had previously been quantified. Here, groups of observers provided ratings of targets’ traits, knowability (how well the observer felt they ‘knew’ the target), and story conventionality, after reading each narrative. Observers exhibited consensus in perceptions of traits, knowability, and story conventionality. These ratings corresponded with targets’ self-ratings of traits, to a modest degree. The knowability of narrators did not moderate this relation, nor did key scene type. The conceptual content of targets’ narratives partially accounted for the relation between observer-reported and target-reported traits.     

Shared focus in mother—child joint activity in the second year of life

Shared focus between mother and child during joint activity was examined. Ten dyads were observed at 16 and 20 months. We found that the level of conventionality expressed by shared focus increases with age. The activity becomes more oriented towards the cultural aspects of the objects than to material aspects, and social games become more oriented towards symbolic and linguistic aspects than to practical ones. Moreover, we found that the content of the game influences the function of the child's utterances both at 16 and at 20 months. These results point to the cultural specification of joint activity, which can be viewed as mediating the development of intersubjectivity as well as individual behaviour.     

Young Children and Adults’ Sensitivity to Contexts for Social Conventions in Make-Believe Play

The author focused on how young children understand the nature of social conventions relating to pretend play. Twenty 4-year-olds, fifteen 6-year-olds, and 20 adults (undergraduate students) listened to vignettes in which a new child in each vignette violated a convention used by other children while playing. Participants indicated whether the violations would be corrected and whether someone needed to teach the conventions to the new children. The scope of a convention (wide versus narrow) in combination with how long the convention has been used affected 6-year-olds’ responses but not the responses of younger children or adults. In addition, there were age-related differences in participants’ beliefs about who could teach characters about the conventions and why characters might not need to be taught by others. These results demonstrate that children at the start of middle childhood can be sensitive to contextual differences in the conventions that shape everyday activities more so than adults and younger children.     

社会规约性及呈现方式对理解会话中的间接回应的影响

间接回应是语言交流中很常见的形式。该研究采用自定步速阅读范式考察社会规约性及呈现方式对理解间接回应的影响。将社会规约性分为高、中、低三个水平,分别对应直接回应、间接拒绝、间接评价三种回应方式,呈现方式采用整句呈现和逐词呈现两种方式。结果发现,在整句呈现时,三种回应方式的阅读时间随规约性高低呈梯度变化,即直接回应的阅读时间最短,间接拒绝次之,间接评价最长; 而逐词呈现时,对间接拒绝和直接回应的阅读时间没有差异,都长于对间接评价的阅读时间。结果表明了社会规约性及呈现方式对间接回应的理解存在交互影响。