Young Children's Responses to Direct and Indirect Directives

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Abstract
Theories in the philosophy of language suggest that the comprehension of indirect requests is a more difficult process than understanding direct requests and involves inferring the intention of the speaker. The results of the present research challenge this accepted theoretical view. Twenty-five girls and 23 boys, 3.2–6.3 years of age, were tested on their comprehension of two types of directives: (a) Nonconventional indirect directives (NID), those not of the imperative form which omit the desired action and agent of action, and (b) Conventional directives (CD), those of the imperative form. An ANOVA demonstrated that the children responded as appropriately to NID as they did to CD. A correlational analysis yielded neither convergent nor discriminant validity for two separate constructs, understanding NID and understanding CD.