Nausicaa Pouscoulous
Biographic Data
| ID | 1112801 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nausicaa Pouscoulous |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nausicaa |
| FAMILY NAME | Pouscoulous |
| SIGNATURE | POUSCOULOUS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2597-7489 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Learning to Presuppose
An utterance can convey information explicitly or implicitly, but it can also presuppose it – that is, treat it as already taken for granted by the interlocutors. Presupposition is therefore a powerful linguistic tool; one that can also be effectively recruited for persuasive speech. Recent experimental investigations have shed more light on how adults interpret presupposition and how children acquire other pragmatic phenomena, such as implicatur…
Trusting the vigilant
Humans rely extensively on communicated information, yet communication exposes receivers to the risk of misinformation. To manage this risk, individuals must not only be vigilant against dishonest informants but also monitor others' vigilance towards deception, especially when information is transmitted across social chains. The present study investigates children's vigilance towards dishonesty ('first-order vigilance'), as well as their ability …
The Developmental Puzzle of Irony Understanding
The prolonged developmental window of irony understanding opens up the question of which socio-cognitive repertoire underlies this pragmatic capacity. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between epistemic vigilance and irony understanding in 5/6- and 6/7-year-old children using a picture selection task. We assessed children’s vigilance towards unreliable informants and manipulated the reliability of the irony target. Our findin…
Irony Comprehension
The present study experimentally investigates the role of epistemic vigilance in children’s comprehension of verbal irony. We tested 186 children aged from 4/5 to 7/8 using an offline irony comprehension task and an epistemic vigilance task. In the vigilance task, we assessed children’s tendency to trust reliable informants and mistrust unreliable ones. The same informants appeared in the irony task as the target of the ironical remarks, allowing…
Presupposition, assertion, and epistemic vigilance across development
This study investigates how linguistic framing—specifically, the use of presupposition versus assertion—affects the critical evaluation of incoming information across development. While presuppositions present content as taken for granted, assertions introduce information as new, leading to differing levels of epistemic scrutiny. Prior work has shown that adults are less likely to detect falsehoods when they are presupposed rather than asserted. …
Children’s vigilance towards others’ gullibility
Humans are endowed with a suite of cognitive mechanisms that enable them to mitigate the risk of misinformation and underlie their epistemic vigilance. When direct access to the initial source of information is unavailable, individuals often rely on the vigilance of others to acquire beliefs. Moreover, monitoring the critical alertness of one’s interlocutors is essential for interpreting their communicative intentions, particularly in cases of de…
Kidding kids
Young children are notoriously bad at understanding ironical statements, with irony comprehension emerging around the age of 6 and appearing resistant to task manipulation. What can explain this late emergence? We propose that children’s epistemic vigilance is a pivotal component of the constellation of socio-cognitive abilities underpinning irony comprehension. Epistemic vigilance enables children to detect the contextual incongruity of an ironi…
Conventionality in irony development
Unlike other figurative language abilities, irony emerges rather late, and its mastering takes place over a protracted window of development. Whilst its late emergence reflects the later development of prerequisite skills, its protracted development is likely to reflect the fact that some ironies are easier to grasp than others. In this paper, we discuss how conventionality is one factor which is likely to contribute to how easily ironies are mas…
Presupposition
How the speaker presents information linguistically may impact the recipient’s epistemic vigilance. For instance, information communicated through a presupposition suggests it does not warrant thorough scrutiny. Traditionally, presuppositions arise from the use of various linguistic triggers, but it has been suggested that a focal status can suspend the triggering of the presupposition. Using a mistake recognition task, we investigate whether the…
How speaker cooperation and knowledge prime scalar implicatures
Pragmatic theories generally agree that the derivation of implicit meaning depends on the assumption that the speaker is cooperative and knowledgeable, as well as the contextual relevance of the implicature. Studies on scalar implicature priming have investigated the latter, but the influence of the first two factors remains understudied. Here, we investigated the effect of the presence (or absence) of a cooperative and knowledgeable interlocutor…
Beyond the Implicit/Explicit Dichotomy
In everyday conversation, messages are often communicated indirectly, implicitly. Why do we seem to communicate so inefficiently? How speakers choose to express a message (modulating confidence, using less explicit formulations) has been proposed to impact how committed they will appear to be to its content. This commitment can be assessed in terms of accountability – is the speaker held accountable for what they communicated? – and deniability –…
Linguistic Skills and Socioeconomic Status
Metaphor understanding can be tricky for children until mid-childhood, yet some research suggests that pre-schoolers are already competent. Many factors have been proposed to play a role in the development of metaphor comprehension. In this study we focus on two obvious contenders that have been overlooked in recent years: general language skills and socioeconomic status (SES). Two-hundred and seventy-two children, aged from 2;11 to 11;04 (146 gi…
Ironic speakers, vigilant hearers
Verbal irony characteristically involves the expression of a derogatory, dissociative attitude. The ironical speaker is not only stating a blatant falsehood or irrelevant proposition; she is also communicating her stance towards its epistemic status. The centrality of attitude recognition in irony understanding opens up the question of which cognitive abilities make it possible. Drawing on Wilson (2009), we provide a full-fledged account of the r…
The development of presupposition
Little is known about presuppositional skills in pre-school years. Developmental research has mostly focused on children’s understanding of too and evidence is mixed: some studies show that the comprehension of too is not adult-like at least until school age, while more recent findings suggest that even pre-schoolers can interpret too -sentences in more age-appropriate tasks. Importantly, no study has tested directly, within the same experiment, …
‘ The moustache ’ returns
Referential metonymy, e.g. ‘ the moustache (= man with a moustache) sits down first’, appears early in L1 acquisition (Falkum, Recasens & Clark, 2017). Yet how does it emerge in pragmatically mature but linguistically developing adult L2 learners? We used one comprehension and two production tasks, based on Falkum and colleagues (2017), to investigate metonymy abilities in 34 Japanese adult learners of English as an additional language (EAL) and …
Pragmatics and epistemic vigilance
Any form of overt communication, be it gestural or linguistic, involves pragmatic skills. This article investigates the social–cognitive foundations of pragmatic development from infancy to late childhood and argues that it is driven by, among other things, the emergence of the capacities to assess the communicator's competence (e.g. perceptual access, epistemic states) and honesty . We discuss the implications of this proposal and show how it sh…
Metaphorical developing minds
Early birds
Metaphor
Metaphors are pervasive in literature and everyday speech. This chapter explores how metaphors are interpreted both by adults and by children. It reviews recent findings and directions of research on four main issues: What is the relation between figurative and literal meaning in metaphor processing? How is the metaphorical meaning arrived at and which factors are at play in the interpretative process? What are the differences and similarities in…
Background Materials for "Embedded implicatures?!?"
Background materials for "Embedded implicatures?!?"
Embedded implicatures
Over the last decade, various proposals have been made for supplanting the classical Gricean theory of scalar implicature with conventionalist (i.e. lexicalist or syntax-based) treatments. In contradistinction to the classical view, conventionalist theories predict that scalar inferences occur systematically and freely in embedded positions. We present experimental evidence that disproves this prediction, arguing along the way that there are rath…
Free choice for all
Chemla (2009) presents experimental data purporting to show that speakers’ intuitions about so-called “embedded implicatures” cause trouble for globalist and localist theories alike. We explain, to begin with, that the way Chemla frames the debate between localists and globalists fails to do justice to the latter. Then we turn to his experimental data, and argue that, while of half of them strengthen our own case against localism (Geurts & Pousco…
A Developmental Investigation of Processing Costs in Implicature Production
Much developmental work has been devoted to scalar implicatures. These are implicitly communicated propositions linked to relatively weak terms (consider how Some pragmatically implies Not all) that are more likely to be carried out by adults than by children. Children tend to retain the linguistically encoded meaning of these terms (wherein Some is compatible with All). In three experiments, we gauge children's performance with scalars while inv…
Early birds
Metaphorical developing minds
Ironic speakers, vigilant hearers
Verbal irony characteristically involves the expression of a derogatory, dissociative attitude. The ironical speaker is not only stating a blatant falsehood or irrelevant proposition; she is also communicating her stance towards its epistemic status. The centrality of attitude recognition in irony understanding opens up the question of which cognitive abilities make it possible. Drawing on Wilson (2009), we provide a full-fledged account of the r…
The development of presupposition
Little is known about presuppositional skills in pre-school years. Developmental research has mostly focused on children’s understanding of too and evidence is mixed: some studies show that the comprehension of too is not adult-like at least until school age, while more recent findings suggest that even pre-schoolers can interpret too -sentences in more age-appropriate tasks. Importantly, no study has tested directly, within the same experiment, …
A Developmental Investigation of Processing Costs in Implicature Production
Much developmental work has been devoted to scalar implicatures. These are implicitly communicated propositions linked to relatively weak terms (consider how Some pragmatically implies Not all) that are more likely to be carried out by adults than by children. Children tend to retain the linguistically encoded meaning of these terms (wherein Some is compatible with All). In three experiments, we gauge children's performance with scalars while inv…
Background Materials for "Embedded implicatures?!?"
Background materials for "Embedded implicatures?!?"
Embedded implicatures
Over the last decade, various proposals have been made for supplanting the classical Gricean theory of scalar implicature with conventionalist (i.e. lexicalist or syntax-based) treatments. In contradistinction to the classical view, conventionalist theories predict that scalar inferences occur systematically and freely in embedded positions. We present experimental evidence that disproves this prediction, arguing along the way that there are rath…
Free choice for all
Chemla (2009) presents experimental data purporting to show that speakers’ intuitions about so-called “embedded implicatures” cause trouble for globalist and localist theories alike. We explain, to begin with, that the way Chemla frames the debate between localists and globalists fails to do justice to the latter. Then we turn to his experimental data, and argue that, while of half of them strengthen our own case against localism (Geurts & Pousco…
Metaphor
Metaphors are pervasive in literature and everyday speech. This chapter explores how metaphors are interpreted both by adults and by children. It reviews recent findings and directions of research on four main issues: What is the relation between figurative and literal meaning in metaphor processing? How is the metaphorical meaning arrived at and which factors are at play in the interpretative process? What are the differences and similarities in…
Metaphorical developing minds
Early birds
‘ The moustache ’ returns
Referential metonymy, e.g. ‘ the moustache (= man with a moustache) sits down first’, appears early in L1 acquisition (Falkum, Recasens & Clark, 2017). Yet how does it emerge in pragmatically mature but linguistically developing adult L2 learners? We used one comprehension and two production tasks, based on Falkum and colleagues (2017), to investigate metonymy abilities in 34 Japanese adult learners of English as an additional language (EAL) and …
Pragmatics and epistemic vigilance
Any form of overt communication, be it gestural or linguistic, involves pragmatic skills. This article investigates the social–cognitive foundations of pragmatic development from infancy to late childhood and argues that it is driven by, among other things, the emergence of the capacities to assess the communicator's competence (e.g. perceptual access, epistemic states) and honesty . We discuss the implications of this proposal and show how it sh…
The development of presupposition
Little is known about presuppositional skills in pre-school years. Developmental research has mostly focused on children’s understanding of too and evidence is mixed: some studies show that the comprehension of too is not adult-like at least until school age, while more recent findings suggest that even pre-schoolers can interpret too -sentences in more age-appropriate tasks. Importantly, no study has tested directly, within the same experiment, …
Linguistic Skills and Socioeconomic Status
Metaphor understanding can be tricky for children until mid-childhood, yet some research suggests that pre-schoolers are already competent. Many factors have been proposed to play a role in the development of metaphor comprehension. In this study we focus on two obvious contenders that have been overlooked in recent years: general language skills and socioeconomic status (SES). Two-hundred and seventy-two children, aged from 2;11 to 11;04 (146 gi…
Ironic speakers, vigilant hearers
Verbal irony characteristically involves the expression of a derogatory, dissociative attitude. The ironical speaker is not only stating a blatant falsehood or irrelevant proposition; she is also communicating her stance towards its epistemic status. The centrality of attitude recognition in irony understanding opens up the question of which cognitive abilities make it possible. Drawing on Wilson (2009), we provide a full-fledged account of the r…
Beyond the Implicit/Explicit Dichotomy
In everyday conversation, messages are often communicated indirectly, implicitly. Why do we seem to communicate so inefficiently? How speakers choose to express a message (modulating confidence, using less explicit formulations) has been proposed to impact how committed they will appear to be to its content. This commitment can be assessed in terms of accountability – is the speaker held accountable for what they communicated? – and deniability –…
Presupposition
How the speaker presents information linguistically may impact the recipient’s epistemic vigilance. For instance, information communicated through a presupposition suggests it does not warrant thorough scrutiny. Traditionally, presuppositions arise from the use of various linguistic triggers, but it has been suggested that a focal status can suspend the triggering of the presupposition. Using a mistake recognition task, we investigate whether the…
How speaker cooperation and knowledge prime scalar implicatures
Pragmatic theories generally agree that the derivation of implicit meaning depends on the assumption that the speaker is cooperative and knowledgeable, as well as the contextual relevance of the implicature. Studies on scalar implicature priming have investigated the latter, but the influence of the first two factors remains understudied. Here, we investigated the effect of the presence (or absence) of a cooperative and knowledgeable interlocutor…
Learning to Presuppose
An utterance can convey information explicitly or implicitly, but it can also presuppose it – that is, treat it as already taken for granted by the interlocutors. Presupposition is therefore a powerful linguistic tool; one that can also be effectively recruited for persuasive speech. Recent experimental investigations have shed more light on how adults interpret presupposition and how children acquire other pragmatic phenomena, such as implicatur…
Trusting the vigilant
Humans rely extensively on communicated information, yet communication exposes receivers to the risk of misinformation. To manage this risk, individuals must not only be vigilant against dishonest informants but also monitor others' vigilance towards deception, especially when information is transmitted across social chains. The present study investigates children's vigilance towards dishonesty ('first-order vigilance'), as well as their ability …
The Developmental Puzzle of Irony Understanding
The prolonged developmental window of irony understanding opens up the question of which socio-cognitive repertoire underlies this pragmatic capacity. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between epistemic vigilance and irony understanding in 5/6- and 6/7-year-old children using a picture selection task. We assessed children’s vigilance towards unreliable informants and manipulated the reliability of the irony target. Our findin…
Irony Comprehension
The present study experimentally investigates the role of epistemic vigilance in children’s comprehension of verbal irony. We tested 186 children aged from 4/5 to 7/8 using an offline irony comprehension task and an epistemic vigilance task. In the vigilance task, we assessed children’s tendency to trust reliable informants and mistrust unreliable ones. The same informants appeared in the irony task as the target of the ironical remarks, allowing…
Presupposition, assertion, and epistemic vigilance across development
This study investigates how linguistic framing—specifically, the use of presupposition versus assertion—affects the critical evaluation of incoming information across development. While presuppositions present content as taken for granted, assertions introduce information as new, leading to differing levels of epistemic scrutiny. Prior work has shown that adults are less likely to detect falsehoods when they are presupposed rather than asserted. …
Children’s vigilance towards others’ gullibility
Humans are endowed with a suite of cognitive mechanisms that enable them to mitigate the risk of misinformation and underlie their epistemic vigilance. When direct access to the initial source of information is unavailable, individuals often rely on the vigilance of others to acquire beliefs. Moreover, monitoring the critical alertness of one’s interlocutors is essential for interpreting their communicative intentions, particularly in cases of de…
Kidding kids
Young children are notoriously bad at understanding ironical statements, with irony comprehension emerging around the age of 6 and appearing resistant to task manipulation. What can explain this late emergence? We propose that children’s epistemic vigilance is a pivotal component of the constellation of socio-cognitive abilities underpinning irony comprehension. Epistemic vigilance enables children to detect the contextual incongruity of an ironi…
Conventionality in irony development
Unlike other figurative language abilities, irony emerges rather late, and its mastering takes place over a protracted window of development. Whilst its late emergence reflects the later development of prerequisite skills, its protracted development is likely to reflect the fact that some ironies are easier to grasp than others. In this paper, we discuss how conventionality is one factor which is likely to contribute to how easily ironies are mas…
Linguistics (15 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Comprehension (11 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Cognitive psychology (8 works) · Cognition (7 works) · Pragmatics (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works)