Ensayos políticos y ensayos musicales

The findings with evidential markers are inconsistent with those of the previous experiment (Chapter Four). In the previous experiment, relatively younger children (around 4-years of age) showed preference for a speaker with an expression of direct witness (i.e., -te) in a task in which the speakers stated conflicting information. Although the children also showed selectivity, it was revealed at a relatively later age (at six) in the current study. Consequently, the results of evidential markers support the alternative hypothesis of the current study and the view that the acquisition of evidential markers might not be mastered until some years later than their use of such markers (Aksu-Koç & Alici, 2000; de Villiers, Garfield, Gernet-Girard, Roeper, & Speas, 2009; Pasquini et al., 2007). Having said that, it is not clear yet that the discrepancy between the previous and current experiments resulted from variations, for example, in children or task differences. However, it seems possible that variations in populations could be ruled out. As noted in the Introduction of Chapter Three, the differences in socioeconomic circumstances could make a difference in children’s

cognitive development. However, the children in both experiments were from areas of similar socioeconomic status. Moreover, the children in the current study showed a similar trajectory of an understanding of verbs identifying mental states such as know and think as mentioned above. Put together, it is possible to discount the possibility of the variations in participants to consider differences in the levels of performance on selective trust with evidential markers between Chapter Four and Five. Another possible explanation is that there are differences in

the tasks between the two experiments. The task in the current study included more questions to judge, ask and endorse, while the previous study had only endorse question. Thus, it seems conceivable that a more complex procedure might have resulted in the differences between the two experiments. However, to rule out this possibility of task differences further

investigation is needed.

It seems that there may be several possibilities to influence the children’s performance on selective trust as discussed in the above part. However, I will consider difficulty in grasping evidentiality as a reason for the relatively later understanding of selectivity. Evidentiality marks two functions: sources of information and certainty. Sources distinguish whether information is from first- or second-hand evidence, while certainty conveys how strong a speaker’s belief is (Willett, 1988). However, I will consider certainty to explain the differences between the tasks in the present study. This is because it seems

possible that the linguistic meaning of how information is obtained by either direct or indirect access might be overridden by the speakers’ behaviour. In other words, the speakers’ actions in which one had direct visual access and the other did not might have had stronger effects than linguistic expressions for information access. This interpretation might be applied to an understanding of evidential markers but not to mental verbs. This is because mental verb terms do not include implications of direct or indirect access to information; thus, children may need to comprehend relative certainty for mental verb terms. Indeed, there is evidence suggesting that visual access has more impact than verbal input in the language acquisition (Andersen, Dunlea, & Kekelis, 1993). The researchers listed showed that children who are visually constrained often lag in language learning than those without such limits. Hence, it might be possible that the children might consider the different ways of obtaining information from two speakers by the actions of visual access in the current study. That is to say, it seems possible to disregard the implications of different sources of information (i.e., direct or

indirect access). Then, it would be necessary to explore a timetable for the acquisition of certainty.

The research suggests that Korean children’s discrimination of certainty between direct and indirect sources of information is acquired by the age of six. For example, Choi, Lee, and Jang (2010) examined whether Korean children between 3- and 6-years of age understood differential degrees of certainty using four evidential markers (i.e., -e (I saw/I know) for direct evidence, -napo (It seems) for inference, ~kes kathta (It seems) for conjecture, -tay (I heard) for hearsay) and their performance (i.e., -e vs. –tay, -e vs. –kes kathta, and –e vs. –napo) was compared with verb terms (i.e., I saw vs. I heard). The children’s understanding of certainty was tested by a task in which two speakers suggested conflicting information (e.g., (I saw/I know that) the thief was wearing glasses vs. (It seems that) the thief was not wearing glasses for differential evidentiality). The children were asked to choose whose information would be right for an event. Source monitoring and working memory tasks were also administered in order to explore relations between cognitive skills and an understanding of certainty. Choi et al. (2010) found that the 6-year-olds’ performance was significantly better than the younger children on the task with evidential; however, their understanding did not reach adults’ levels for three comparisons of evidentiality. Performance on the verb terms was significantly better than differential evidentiality for both –e vs. –kes kathta and –e vs. –tay. Importantly, the 3-year-olds tended to distinguish the statements by the verb terms but not by evidential markers. These findings seem to indicate that Korean children’s ability to judge reliable information from different degrees of certainty might develop at the age of six, in particular when the information was conveyed by the

grammaticalized terms. Hence, the findings of Choi et al. would support the findings of the relatively late exhibition of selective trust with evidential markers in the present study.

linguistic access affected their grasp of social cognitive understanding. It seems that Korean children may develop an understanding of beliefs at the age of four. However, different linguistic expressions of beliefs influenced performance on a certain task designed to reveal their social understanding. The current study and previously published findings showed that children under the age of six did not fully comprehend the implications of evidential markers. Thus, it is conceivable that a lack of understanding of evidentiality might also explain

variations in the current and previous experiments.

It might call into question whether the selective trust paradigm used here provided precise ways to explore children’s selectivity as the task combined experimental and linguistic manipulation. First, I discussed possible explanations that children may consider relative certainty by linguistic information over visual access to an object in the section of 4.4.3 in the previous chapter. Secondly, comparison with previously published research would confirm that the tasks used here demonstrated effects of language on children’s selective trust. As mentioned in Chapter One, research has shown that children between 3- and 4-years of age are able to judge reliability of others’ testimony and learn from a previously accurate speaker (e.g., Birch et al., 2008; Corriveau & Harris, 2009b; Jaswal & Neely, 2006). Based on this accumulating evidence, it seems possible to speculate that Korean children may show selectivity around 3-4-years of age if two speakers’ testimony differed in accuracy. The findings from the selective trust task with evidential markers were inconsistent with this accuracy-based selectivity in young children with regard to the developmental pattern. However, this does not indicate that Korean children had difficulty distinguishing a reliable source of information as the findings by mental verb terms showed a consistent tendency with the studies mentioned above. Therefore, the discrepancies between the selective trust tasks in this study would indicate that children might have taken linguistic references into consideration over visual access to information when they judged reliability of

others. As mentioned in Chapter One, success in selective trust requires children to assess belief status of others. According to Johnson (1982), a grasp of implications of mentalistic language and a concept of a mind may be acquired simultaneously in children. That is, the findings in the selective trust questions which included evidential markers might suggest the role of the language (particularly the demands of unpacking the meaning of a protagonist’s utterance) in social understanding. In summary, the findings of the present study imply that young children’s social-cognitive skills were closely related to linguistic references.