What is it about?
Imagine that you are inviting a friend for dinner. You tell them that you are considering making lasagna. They respond, “Lasagna’s ok.” Should you make lasagna for them? This depends on whether you think they like lasagna or not. If your friend generally makes positive comments about food when dining out, you might infer that they do not like lasagna and are trying to be polite. However, if this person generally makes negative evaluations, for example, “bad” or “not good,” you might infer that they really do like lasagna. We examined whether 5- to 8-year-old children and adults interpret others' ambiguous evaluations based on their past statements.
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Why is it important?
Accurately interpreting what people mean when they make evaluative judgments is essential for navigating daily interactions. These interpretive skills are fundamental to pragmatic reasoning in daily communications and support learning from others.
Perspectives
In daily life, we frequently face situations where others' evaluations seem ambiguous at face value. In those situations, we need to use speaker-specific cues to understand what they truly mean. Speakers' past evaluations provide us with rich cues to interpret their ambiguous judgments. Starting from 5, children consider the speakers' evaluative repertoire to understand their true preferences.
F. Ece Özkan
University of Toronto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Children’s developing ability to make sense of evaluative judgments based on a speaker’s evaluative history., Developmental Psychology, April 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/dev0002190.
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