Children's use of expectations as a source of information in language comprehension

Six studies of children's comprehension of the passive transformation and of the Minimum Distance Principle are reviewed and their results integrated. Children were in kindergarten through Grade 6, inclusive. Expectations about usual grammatical relations (e.g., agent/action combinations) significantly affected children's comprehension: sentences reflecting expectations were understood more often than sentences contradicting children's expressed expectations. Results are discussed within the framework of referential event strategies in understanding spoken language. Limits of the effect of children's expectation on comprehension are described, including general cognitive developmental status, relevant belief systems, and nature of the psycholinguistic task.