Factors Influencing Young Children's Ability to Detect Logical Inconsistencies in Oral Communications

Abstract

Factors influencing the ability of kindergarten and first grade children to detect inconsistencies in communications were investigated in two experiments. The first experiment revealed that detection was better when the inconsistency occurred between contiguous rather than interspersed statements but that performance was not influenced by the particular source of the story (an adult versus a puppet). The second experiment manipulated set (whether or not children were explicitly told that some passages would not make sense), passage length (short versus long) and passage content (animal versus non-animal). Main effects were obtained for each variable. The results suggest that children as young as five years of age can detect inconsistencies provided the communications presented to them do not exceed their processing capacities or concern topics which prompt a suspension of these capacities.

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