Recognition and repair of communicative failures: A developmental perspective

The aim of our study is to analyze the cognitive processes underlying recognition and repair of communicative failures. In particular, following the tenets of Cognitive Pragmatics, a theory of the mental processes underlying the comprehension and production of communicative acts, we propose an original taxonomy of the different kinds of failure which may occur in communicative interaction: Failure of the expression act, Failure of the actor's meaning, and Failure of the communicative effect. In particular, we operationally define both recognition and repair of the communicative failures. Finally, we predict a different trend in difficulty for the recognition and the repair of the three possible kinds of failure. The hypotheses are preliminarily confirmed by the results of an experiment conducted with children aged 3–8 years.