Children’s understanding of how noise disrupts verbal communication

Having an abstract understanding of communication means being able to reason not just about its success but also its failure: when and why it fails, what happens as a consequence, and how to fix it. Auditory noise in particular can radically alter the fidelity of verbal communication, yet little is known about how language users reason about its role in communication and when such reasoning emerges in development. The current work investigates the development of children’s reasoning about auditory noise. As observers of others' communication, we found that a sample of US children as young as age three understood that auditory noise impedes others’ hearing, though the ability to reason about its effect on others’ knowledge and behaviors may not develop until slightly later. As communicators, a separate sample of four-year-olds tailored how they themselves communicated by using more gestures when their partner couldn't hear. Taken together, these results suggest that even young children may possess an abstract understanding of communication that is integrated with their ability to reason about others’ perception and knowledge. Such an understanding enables children to reason about how noise disrupts communication and how to communicate effectively in the presence of noise.