More than one path to pragmatics? Insights from children's grasp of implicit, figurative and ironical meaning

Loopholes: A window into value alignment and the communication of meaning

Intentional misunderstandings take advantage of the ambiguity of language to do what someone said, instead of what they actually wanted. These purposeful misconstruals or loopholes are a familiar facet of fable, law, and everyday life. Engaging with loopholes requires a nuanced understanding of goals (your own and those of others), ambiguity, and social alignment. As such, loopholes provide a unique window into the normal operations of cooperation and communication. Despite their pervasiveness and utility in social interaction, research on loophole behavior is scarce. Here, we combine a theoretical analysis with empirical data to give a framework of loophole behavior. We first establish that loopholes are widespread, and exploited most often in equal or subordinate relationships (Study 1). We show that people reliably distinguish loophole behavior from both compliance and non-compliance (Study 2), and that people predict that others are most likely to exploit loopholes when their goals are in conflict with their social partner's and there is a cost for non-compliance (Study 3). We discuss these findings in light of other computational frameworks for communication and joint-planning, as well as discuss how loophole behavior might develop and the implications of this work for human-machine alignment.

Preschoolers' Comprehension of Functional Metaphors

Previous work suggests that preschoolers often misunderstand metaphors. However, some recent studies demonstrate that preschoolers can represent abstract relations, suggesting that the cognitive foundations of metaphor comprehension may develop earlier than previously believed. The present experiments used novel paradigms to explore whether preschoolers (N = 200; 4-5 years; 100 males, 100 females; predominantly White) can understand metaphors based on abstract, functional similarities. In Experiment 1, preschoolers and adults (N = 64; 18-41 years; 25 males, 39 females; predominantly White) rated functional metaphors (e.g., "Roofs are hats"; "Tires are shoes") as "smarter" than nonsense statements (e.g., "Boats are skirts"; "Pennies are sunglasses") in a metalinguistic judgment task (d = .42 in preschoolers; d = 3.06 in adults). In Experiment 2, preschoolers preferred functional explanations (e.g., "Both keep you dry") over perceptual explanations (e.g., "Both have pointy tops") when interpreting functional metaphors (e.g., "Roofs are hats") (d = .99). In Experiment 3, preschoolers preferred functional metaphors (e.g., "Roofs are hats") over nonsense statements (e.g., "Roofs are scissors") when prompted to select the "better" utterance (d = 1.25). Moreover, over a quarter of preschoolers in Experiment 1 and half of preschoolers in Experiment 3 explicitly articulated functional similarities when justifying their responses, and the performance of these subsets of children drove the success of the entire sample in both experiments. These findings demonstrate that preschoolers can understand metaphors based on abstract, functional similarities.