The allative bias in three-year-olds is almost proof against task naturalness
- 1 February 1981
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Child Language
- Vol. 8 (2) , 283-296
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900003196
Abstract
An allative bias has been noted in children's comprehension of deictic verbs and directional prepositions. This study investigates the allative bias and its susceptibility to contextual modification. Three-year-olds were asked to act according to requests to move one object to or from another, and to identify where an object had come from or gone to. A reliable bias was found whereby ‘to’ was easier than ‘from’. Attempts to make the utterance more naturally related to the task, by using movement and fronted objects, modulated the bias to a small extent, but did not abolish it. An analysis of directional expressions in terms of the components SOURCE, PATH and GOAL is presented in relation to the task-demands.Keywords
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