YOUNG CHILDRENS UNDERSTANDING OF PROMISING - METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

In her inceptive study of promising, Astington (1988) found that five- year-olds failed to distinguish promises from predictions when judging story characters' utterances. Instead, their responses were based on whether the promised event had actually occurred. There is reason to b elieve, however, that the children's poor performance was an artefact of Astington's procedures. We tested this possibility with 32 children (mean age 5;8: range 5;7-6;2) by including several variations of Asti ngton's procedures, but found no effects on the pattern of results. Th is suggests that Astington's findings are an accurate reflection of th e developmental course of knowledge about promising.