Processing of script deviations by young children∗

Abstract

This study investigated children's understanding of script deviations. In the first experiment, 4‐ and 6‐year‐olds were given a shopping script story, which contained a violation of the script's entry condition (customer's nonpossession of money) and stopped before the paying episode. Three conditions were realized: (a) The child had to complete the story; (b) the experimenter completed the story in a way inconsistent with the violated entry condition; and (c) the child was induced to check the preconditions of the inconsistent act. It was found that more than 60% of the 4‐year‐olds and all of the 6‐year‐olds completed the script by indicating the impossibility of the normally following action. About the same proportions were correct when induced to check the precondition of paying; but none of the 4‐year‐olds and only half of the 6‐year‐olds recognized the inconsistency when the experimenter completed the story. Experiment II showed that 4‐year‐olds’ problem with consistent script completion or induced inconsistency recognition resulted from a wrong initial representation of the violation of the script's entry condition. All 4‐year‐olds seem to engage spontaneously in the prediction of obstacles and/or in the checking of preconditions when processing script deviations. This is contradictory to characterization of young children as deficient in spontaneous conceptual processing which are based on young children's failure to recognize discourse anomalies such as omissions or inconsistencies.