Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Delaware.
Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania.
Cogn Sci. 2021 Feb;45(2):e12938. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12938.
In sentences such as "Some dogs are mammals," the literal semantic meaning ("Some and possibly all dogs are mammals") conflicts with the pragmatic meaning ("Not all dogs are mammals," known as a scalar implicature). Prior work has shown that adults vary widely in the extent to which they adopt the semantic or pragmatic meaning of such utterances, yet the underlying reason for this variation is unknown. Drawing on theoretical models of scalar implicature derivation, we explore the hypothesis that the cognitive abilities of executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) contribute to this observed variation. In Experiment 1, we show that individuals with better ToM are more likely to compute a scalar implicature and adopt the pragmatic meaning of an utterance; however, EF makes no unique contribution to scalar implicature comprehension after accounting for ToM. In Experiment 2, we replicate this finding and assess whether it generalizes to the comprehension of other pragmatic phenomena such as indirect requests (e.g., "It's hot in here" uttered to ask for something to be done) and metaphor (e.g., "to harvest courage"). This is the first evidence that differences in ToM are associated with pragmatic competence in neurotypical adults across distinct pragmatic phenomena.
在“Some dogs are mammals”这样的句子中，字面语义（“一些狗和可能所有的狗都是哺乳动物”）与语用意义（“并非所有的狗都是哺乳动物”，被称为标量蕴含）相冲突。先前的研究表明，成年人在多大程度上采用这些话语的语义或语用意义存在很大差异，但这种差异的根本原因尚不清楚。借鉴标量蕴含推导的理论模型，我们探讨了以下假设：执行功能（EF）和心理理论（ToM）的认知能力对此观察到的变异性有贡献。在实验 1 中，我们表明，具有更好的 ToM 的个体更有可能计算出标量蕴含并采用话语的语用意义；然而，在考虑 ToM 之后，EF 对标量蕴含理解没有独特的贡献。在实验 2 中，我们复制了这一发现，并评估它是否适用于其他语用现象的理解，例如间接请求（例如，“这里很热”是为了要求做某事而说的）和隐喻（例如，“收获勇气”）。这是第一个证据，表明在不同的语用现象中，ToM 的差异与神经典型成年人的语用能力相关。
