Processing Scalar Inference of the Model ‘Keneng’ in Mandarin Children: ERP Evidence

Understanding how children acquire pragmatic competence, particularly the ability to infer scalar implicatures from modal expressions, remains a central challenge in developmental linguistics and cognitive neuroscience. This study investigates the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying Mandarin-speaking children’s comprehension of the scalar modal keneng (“might/possibly”), which conveys both semantic probability and context-dependent pragmatic inferences. Utilizing event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined how children aged 7 to 10 process keneng under upper-bound (pragmatic) and lower-bound (semantic) contextual conditions.Eighty typically developing children participated in an EEG experiment using a contextually manipulated sentence judgment task. Behavioral results revealed that while all age groups distinguished between semantic and pragmatic interpretations, performance accuracy declined under pragmatic contexts, indicating elevated cognitive demands for deriving implicatures. ERP analyses demonstrated a graded developmental trajectory across five key components (P200, N400, P600, LPP, LPC). Seven-year-olds exhibited larger P200 and N400 amplitudes under pragmatic contexts, reflecting heightened attentional engagement and semantic integration difficulty. P600 and LPP effects, associated with pragmatic reanalysis and sustained cognitive effort, emerged prominently from age eight, marking a neurocognitive transition toward context-sensitive inferencing. By age ten, children demonstrated stabilized ERP patterns, indicative of adult-like pragmatic processing efficiency.These findings provide the first neurophysiological evidence delineating the developmental stages of scalar implicature processing in Mandarin-speaking children. Critically, they support a Cognitive-Dynamic Relevance Model, positing that children’s pragmatic interpretation of modals arises from an interaction between default semantic activation, contextual modulation, and cognitive resource regulation. This research advances theoretical models of language acquisition and offers empirical foundations for educational interventions targeting pragmatic development.