This item is intended to tap the understanding of speech acts with specific regard for “promise”. A speech act can be defined as an utterance that serves a communicative function. “Speech acts are things we do with words…such as making statements, asking questions, giving orders, making promises, etc.” (Astington, 1988a, p. 411). In some classification schemes, a promise is referred to as a ‘commissive’ because it commits the speaker to a certain course of action. It can also be referred to as a ‘performative’ (or explicit performative) which is a special kind of speech act where the verb’s action is the speech act. According to Austin (1962), the uttering of a performative is itself the doing of an action. When we say “I do” (as in a marriage ceremony) and “I take thee…” or “I bet you money” or “I accept your apology”, we not only utter words, but we perform the social acts of doing, taking, betting, and accepting.

Understanding the speech act of promising is difficult for a few reasons. First, grasp of the performative promise requires an understanding of the syntactic cues that signal verb tense (Bernicot & Laval, 1996; Laval & Bernicot, 1999). Although a promise references a future action, the main verb must be present tense (i.e., saying “I promise I will…” is a performative but saying “I will promise tomorrow…” predicts a future objective to promisebut fails to perform the act of promising itself). Understanding “promise” also requires a complex understanding of intention (Maas, 2008). To illustrate, Searle (1969) proposed a number of fulfillment conditions that define “promise” in light of listener and speaker expectations and intents. These include, but are not limited to, the notion that the promise refers to a future act, an act which is possible, an act which is intentional, and an act that would not have obviously been carried out if there were no promise.

Major developments in the comprehension of promising occur in the preschool years. Preschoolersacquire (in this order) the understanding that 1) promising entails an obligation to act and 2) the listener wants the promised action to be accomplished (which distinguishes promises from threats; Bernicot & Laval, 1996; Laval & Bernicot, 1999; Lyon & Evans, 2014). At around age five, children’s behavior also begins to align with their expressed promises (Heyman, Fu, Lin, Qian, & Lee, 2015). First-order false belief reasoning also correlates with the ability to understand the act of promising from a participant’s own perspective whereas second-order false belief reasoning is related to the understanding from a listener’s perspective (Maas, 2008). Similarly, during promise comprehension “children take the speaker’s intentions into account before considering the listener’s desires” (Laval & Bernicot, 1999, p. 193).Given these preschool year developments (and consideringthe fact that the wording of this item is limited to the understanding of promise as entailing obligation),comprehension of the performativepromise is construed as a Basic theory of mind competency. Nevertheless, several subsequent developments crucial to a mature understanding of promise emerge in later years. It is not until late childhood (~ 9 years) that children reliably distinguish between promising as a performative(e.g., “I promise to take you to the movies”) and promising as prediction (“It will be a nice day today, I promise!”) in terms of the speaker’s responsibility for the outcome (Astington, 1988b,c; Maas & Abbeduto, 1998).This is also a time when children begin to make nuanced moral judgments about the morality of and accountability for broken promises (Hussar & Horvath, 2013). Moreover, the ability to talk about the metapragmatics of promising and to grasp the range of circumstances and social obligations that are entailed in promising emerges not until early adolescence and adulthood (Astington, 1988a,b,c, 1990; Bernicot & Laval, 1996).In summary, comprehension of the performative “promise” is complex, it unfolds over a protracted timetable, and a mature understanding requires the ability to reason in complex ways about the mental states of others both over time and across situational contexts.

Understanding of the speech act ‘promise’ in ASD

Although children with ASD are known to have difficulty in the realm of pragmatics (including an understanding of speech acts), we are aware of only one study examining the comprehension of the performative “promise” in ASD. Hutchins et al. (2016) compared typically developing (TD) males, males with ASD, and males with ADHD for their comprehension of the speech act “promise” using the Theory of Mind Inventory. Results revealed that although the ASD and ADHD groups received significantly lower scores on the inventory compared to the TD sample, only five items –one of which was this ToMI-2 item that relates to promising - distinguished the ASD from both the TD and ADHD groups. As such, comprehension of the performative “promise” appeared to be uniquely disrupted in ASD. As Hutchins et al. (2016) explained, the mastery of performatives:

“requiresawarenessoftherolethatlanguageplaysinsocialinteractionandthelinksbetween languageand the inner mentalstatesofoneselfandothers.TheToMIitemdesignedtotap understandingofperformativesemployedthe exampleof ‘promise’ which maybeunderstood merelyasaword(likeanyotherword)orasadeed;onethatobligates the speaker andformsa socialcontractwiththelistener.Thus,itmakessensethatparentsofchildrenwithASDwould report deficient understandingofperformatives” (p. 105).

Understanding of the speech act ‘promise’ in ADHD

Although children with ADHD are known to have difficulty in the realm of pragmatics, we are aware of only one study examining the comprehension of the performative “promise” in this population. Hutchins et al. (2016) compared typically developing (TD) males, males with ASD, and males with ADHD for their comprehension of the speech act “promise” using the Theory of Mind Inventory. Results revealed that although the ASD and ADHD groups received significantly lower scores on the inventory compared to the TD sample, only five items –one of which was this ToMI-2 item that relates to promising - distinguished the ASD from both the TD and ADHD groups. That is, comprehension of the performative “promise” appeared to be uniquely disrupted in ASD yet spared in ADHD and there were no differences in performative comprehension between the TD and ADHD groups. Caution is warranted, however. As noted above, the ‘promise’ item on the ToMI-2 is restricted in scope and designed to focus only on the basic understanding of the speech act as one that creates an obligation on the part of the speaker. Much more is involved in the adult understanding of promise which could be disrupted in ADHD and which represents an important direction for future research.

Understanding of the speech act ‘promise’ in DoHH

Although children who are DoHH are known to have difficulty in the realm of pragmatics, we are aware of only one study examining their comprehension of the performative “promise”. Hutchins, Allen, and Schefer (in preparation) analyzed caregiver-informant data (i.e., from the Theory of Mind Inventory-2) for a small sample of oral and late-signing children (ages 5 – 11) with corrected hearing loss. They found that deficits in promise comprehension occurred in approximately 33% of children (i.e., 4/12 children) which appeared to be related to more limited access to language in the prelinguistic and toddler years.

REFERENCES

Astington, J. (1990). Metapragmatics: Children’s conception of promising. In G. Conti-Ramsden & C. Snow (Eds.) Children’s Language, Vol. 7(pp.223-244). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Astington, J. (1988a). Children’s production of commissive speech acts. Journal of Child Language, 15, 411-423.

Astington, J. (1988b). Children’sunderstanding of the speech act of promising. Journal of Child Language, 15, 157-173.

Astington, J. (1988c). Promises: Words or deeds? First Language, 8, 259-270.

Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Benicot, J., & Laval, V. (1996). Promises in French children: Comprehension and metapragmatic knowledge. Journal of Pragmatics, 25, 101-122.

Heyman, G., Fu, G., Lin, J., Qian, M., & Lee, K. (2015). Eliciting promises from children reduces cheating. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 139, 242-248.

Hussar, K., & Horvath, J. (2013). But you promised: Children’s judgments of broken promises. Psychology, 4(12), 1046-1050.

Hutchins, T., Allen, L., & Schefer, M. (in preparation). Scope and variability of theory of mind impairment in oral and late-signing children with hearing loss.

Hutchins, T. L., Prelock, P. A., Morris, H., Benner, J., LaVigne, T., & Hoza, B. (2016). Explicit vs. applied theory of mind competence: A comparison of typically developing males, males with ASD, and males with ADHD. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 21, 94-108.

Laval, V., & Bernicot, J. (1999). How French speaking children understand promises: The role of the future tense. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28(2), 179-195.

Lyon, R., & Evans, A. (2014). Young children’s understanding that promising guarantees performance: The effects of age and maltreatment. Law & Human Behavior, 38(2), 162-170.

Maas, F. (2008). Children’s understanding of promising, lying, and false belief. Journal of General Psychology, 135(3), 301-321.

Maas, F., & Abbeduto, L. (1998). Young children’s understanding of promising: Methodological considerations. Journal of Child Language, 25, 203-214.

Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

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