Wang (2009)

Wang (2009) explored Chinese children‘s developmental understanding of promise. Based on Austin‘s (1962) speech act theory, Wang examined Searle‘s (1969) preparatory condition and sincerity condition of the speech act of promising on Chinese children synchronically. Among the previous studies on children‘s understanding of promising, Wang presented a preliminary study on promising in Mandarin Chinese, while previous research all focused on western languages (Astington, 1988a; Bernicot and Laval, 1996, 2004; Maas, 2008; Maas and Abbeduto, 2001). In the study, a large number of participants were recruited, including three age groups: 3-, 6-, and 9-year-olds. Two hundred and ten native Chinese children were assigned to each age; that is, a total number of 630 subjects participated in the study.

They were requested to finish two experiments by making judgments and justifications. However, the 630 subjects did not participate in the whole research design items. They were further divided into eighteen subgroups with thirty-five subjects in each subgroup. That is to say, one subject only had to work on one task out of the six in both experiments.

In Experiment 1, the subjects were asked to judge the listener‘s status of mind according to the listener‘s preference for the promise act to examine their understanding of the speech act of promising. After the description of a story scenario in first three frames, they were asked to finish the fourth frame of the strip by

Table 2-4. Experimental Design in Wang (2009) (linguistics forms: promise-to-act, future-action, and predicative assertion) analysis of variance. Similarly, in Experiment 2, the only difference made was in the sincerity condition rather than the preparatory condition. Therefore, it was a 3 (age groups) × 3 (linguistics forms) × 2 (sincerity condition) factorial variance (see Table 2-4).

The major findings of this study are as follows: First, children‘s understanding of promise evolved with age regarding their native language, and the earliest age to acquire the concept of promise was nine, as consistent as the previous findings, while the emerge age of taking cues of the outcome and the listener‘s desire into consideration was three. The results presented a tendency of children‘s understanding of promise and salient differences between groups. Second, in addition to the outcome of a promise, the listener‘s perspective of the promise could be a factor affecting children‘s understanding of promise. Third, the linguistic forms of the statement (promise-to-act, future-action, and predicative assertion) had no influence on children‘s understanding of the speech act of promising. In Experiment 1, the speaker‘s promise was uttered with three linguistic forms: with performative verb

―promise‖, without performative verb ―promise‖, and in a tone of predicative assertion. The subject‘s responses showed no significant difference among the three linguistic forms.

In Wang‘s study, several inadequacies are listed as follows. First, in the research design, each subject participated in only one task item in both experiments.

Considered the various backgrounds of each subject, the different answers of different task items might not be caused by the experimental variables but individual difference.

Thus, the reliability of the study might not be stable. Secondly, there was no production task in the research design. The findings were only concluded from the comprehension tasks. Last but not least, according to Searle‘s conditions of promise, the sincerity condition is on speaker‘s intention while bringing out the promise.

However, Wang used the outcome of the promise, which should be the essential condition, as the variable factor in the study. The outcome of a promise cannot always stand for the speaker‘s intention while making a commitment. A speaker can sincerely make a promise to the hearer and fail to complete the promise because of unforeseen obstacles. On the other hand, a speaker may insincerely make a commitment to a hearer and be forced by a powerful authority to accomplish this commitment.

Therefore, the speaker‘s intention of promise and the outcome should be viewed as two different factors. Thus, it is obvious that there are some inconsistencies between Wang‘s research design and Searle‘s sincerity condition of promise.

2.4.5 Summary

Previous empirical studies on children‘s understanding of promise have been reviewed in this section and the following table summarizes the details of the major findings and limitations of these studies:

Table 2-5. Major Findings and Limitations of the Previous Empirical Studies

Major findings Limitations 3. The youngest age for children to

1. Subjects: uncertain language background

2. Task: only comprehension but no production task

3. Test factor not included:

understand promises: 9 a. absent performative verb

3. The youngest age for children to understand promises: 9 Wang 1. Factors affecting children‘s 1. Subjects:

Children‘s understanding of the speech act of a promise was found to develop gradually with their age. Around the age of seven, young children‘s concept of promise started to emerge and their concept solidified at the age of nine (Astington, 1988a; Maas and Abbeduto, 2001; Wang, 2009). When it comes to the factors affecting children‘s judgment on promise, it was found that children considered the outcome of the promise the most. For young children, whether the promise is fulfilled determines a successful expression of speech act of promise (Astington, 1988a; Maas and Abbeduto, 2001; Wang, 2009). In addition, in their judgment of responsibility, it was found that the outcome of the promise again played an important role (Astington, 1988a; Wang, 2009). However, older children tended to have sympathy if the promiser broke a promise with reason (Maas and Abbeduto, 2001).