Is Children's Difficulty Comprehending But Linked to Revision?

Children struggle to interpret the connective but before age seven. However, we provide new evidence that their difficulty is not due to a misinterpretation of but per se, but rather a difficulty to revise their initial expectations. In two experiments, we examined French-speaking 6-to-9-year-olds’s interpretations of novel words in sentences containing alors (so) or mais (but), e.g., “Lea wanted to heat up her food, [so/but] she put it in the rane.” By varying whether the final interpretation of the novel word required or not revising the expectations created by the initial clause, we found that children successfully interpreted both so and but in sentences that did not require revision, but they failed in sentences requiring revision. Regardless of connective type, even by age 9, children struggled to regulate revision. We discuss possible factors contributing to variation in children’s success, including the effect of socioeconomic status.