From Subjective Certainty to Information Source: The Interpretation of Evidential and Epistemic Markers in Spanish-Speaking Children
This study investigated how Spanish-speaking children interpret events when confronted with evidential and epistemic markers. Seventy-two children aged four, six, and eight completed a narrative comprehension task involving three conditions: sincerity (linguistic and visual information aligned), tri...
| Autores: | , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2026 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia |
| Repositorio: | e-spacio. Repositorio Institucional de la UNED |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dnet:espacio_____::3fb900f729b26c7dcf6438d43a7a3a02 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/32574 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | 5505.10 Filología evidentiality epistemic modality Spanish comprehension pragmatic development |
| Sumario: | This study investigated how Spanish-speaking children interpret events when confronted with evidential and epistemic markers. Seventy-two children aged four, six, and eight completed a narrative comprehension task involving three conditions: sincerity (linguistic and visual information aligned), trickery (conflicting information), and blind (linguistic information only). Results revealed clear age-related differences in interpretation. Four-year-olds showed higher accuracy with expressions of subjective certainty, whereas 6- and 8-year-olds were more accurate when evidential markers explicitly indicated the source of information, particularly in the blind condition. These findings point to an age-related shift from reliance on subjective certainty to greater sensitivity to source-based linguistic cues, even in a language such as Spanish that lacks grammaticalised evidentiality. |
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