Singer J B, Flavell J H
Child Dev. 1981;52(4):1211-5.
Kindergartners and second graders evaluated the communicative clarity of brief oral instructions under 3 conditions: (1) unambiguous: referentially unambiguous instructions that the subjects saw a puppet listener correctly carry out; (2) no closure: ambiguous instructions that the puppet explicitly identified as ambiguous and refused to try to carry out; (3) closure: equally ambiguous instructions that the puppet also explicitly identified as ambiguous but nonetheless carried out, confidently asserting that he thought the speaker meant a specific 1 of the 2 equally possible referents. The younger, but not the older, subjects were influenced by the listener's behavior as well as by the speaker's: That is, they rated the closure instructions as clearer than the no-closure instructions, although less clear than the unambiguous ones. These results suggest that the growth of children's knowledge about communication includes the developing awareness that, in communication situations like the above, an ambiguous message is intrinsically unclear and remains a poor message regardless of the listener's response to it.
（1）明确无误：指示在指代上明确无误，受试者看到一个木偶听众正确执行了这些指示；（2）无结论：指示含糊不清，木偶明确指出其含糊不清并拒绝尝试执行；（3）有结论：同样含糊不清的指示，木偶也明确指出其含糊不清，但仍然执行了，并且自信地断言它认为说话者指的是两种同样可能的指代对象中的某一个特定对象。年幼的受试者（而非年长的受试者）受到听众行为以及说话者行为的影响：也就是说，他们将有结论的指示评为比无结论的指示更清晰，尽管不如明确无误的指示清晰。这些结果表明，儿童关于交流的知识增长包括逐渐意识到，在上述这样的交流情境中，含糊不清的信息本质上就是不清晰的，并且无论听众对其作何反应，它仍然是一个糟糕的信息。
