Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

As adults, we use polite speech on a daily basis. What do chil-dren understand about polite speech? Looking at children’s po-lite speech comprehension can help examine children’s prag-matic understanding more generally, and can be informativefor caregivers who want to teach children what it means to bepolite. Even though children start to produce polite speechfrom early on, there is little known about whether they under-stand intentions behind polite language. Here we show that by3 years, English-speaking preschool children understand that itis more polite and nicer (and less rude and mean) to use polite-ness markers such as “please” when making requests, and by4 years, they understand that the use of these politeness mark-ers indicates that the speaker is more socially likeable and ismore likely to gain compliance from their conversational part-ners. This work can help lay the foundation for future work onchildren’s understanding of polite speech and pragmatic devel-opment more generally.