When children’s language comprehension is good-enough
Résumé
Children’s language understanding has been studied as resulting in a dichotomy, with children either fully capturing meaning or failing to capture it entirely. However, it does not seem to reflect in daily interactions. This study examined children’s good-enough comprehension, this level of comprehension being defined as the formation of an imprecise and shallow yet mostly satisfying representation of the meaning of an utterance, used in communicative settings. Ten-year-old children were presented a test created for this study, in which they had to answer falsified questions under two conditions (speed answering vs precise answering). Mixed model analyses showed that children displayed good-enough comprehension by not noticing the falsification in the speed condition. Further analyses also showed that the time children took to answer falsified questions was significantly longer than non-falsified questions, even when the falsification went unnoticed. The consideration of good-enough comprehension in children dictates a reevaluation of existing literature on children’s comprehension, as good-enough comprehension may precede good comprehension during development.