Making inferences in communication is a highly context-dependent endeavor. Previous research
found cultural variations for context-sensitivity as well as for communication comprehension.
However, the relative impact of culture and context-sensitivity on communication
comprehension has not been investigated so far. The current study aimed at investigating this
interplay and tested 4- and 6-year-old children from Germany (n = 132) and China (n = 129).
Context-sensitivity was measured with an adapted version of the Ebbinghaus illusion. In this
task, children have to discriminate the size of two target circles that only appear to be of similar
size due to context circles surrounding the target circles. As expected, performance scores
indicated higher degrees of context-sensitivity in Chinese compared to German children and
that 6-year-olds were more context-sensitive than 4-year-olds. Further, in an object-choice
communication-comprehension task, children watched videos with puppets performing everyday
activities (e.g., pet care) and had to choose between two options (e.g., dog or rabbit). A
puppet expressed what she wanted either directly (“I want the rabbit”) or indirectly (“I have
a carrot”). The children had to choose one option to give to the puppet. In both cultures,
6-year-olds outperformed 4-year-olds and children understood direct communication better
than indirect communication. Culture was found to affect children’s processing speed of direct
communication. Moreover, culture influenced children’s context-sensitivity while contextsensitivity
influenced children’s accuracy in the indirect (but not the direct) communication
task. These findings demonstrate that taking context into account is especially important when
we are confronted with indirect communication.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:88166 |
| Date | 20 November 2023 |
| Creators | Schulze, Cornelia, Buttelmann, David, Zhu, Liqi, Saalbach, Henrik |
| Publisher | Sage Publications |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 10.1177/00220221221104952 |
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