Quantifier Spreading in School-Age Children: An Eye-Tracking Study

Abstract

Children make quantifier-spreading errors in contexts involving sets in partial one-to-one correspondence; e.g., Every bunny is in a box is rejected as a description of three bunnies, each in a box, along with two extra boxes. To determine whether a signature pattern of visual attention is associated with the classic q-spreading error as it occurs in real time, eye-movements were recorded while children (N = 41; mean 8 y;9 m, range 5;8–12;1) performed a sentence-picture verification task, with every modifying either the figure or ground of locative scenes (every bunny vs. every box). On trials designed to elicit the classic error, children performed at chance (53.3% correct). Errors involved greater numbers of fixations to the extra objects/containers, time-locked to regions following the quantified noun phrase. Correct responses were associated with longer reaction times, indicating additional processing required for quantifier restriction; accuracy was uncorrelated with verbal or nonverbal intelligence and only weakly associated with age. The findings underscore the susceptibility of school-age children to make errors given a default expectation for distributive quantifiers like every to refer to sets in one-to-one correspondence and their inattention to sentence structure.