Promises: words or deeds?

Although young children perform speech acts, they do not have a concept of the speech act that older children acquire, and they are not aware of the role that language plays in social interaction. This meta- pragmatic understanding is particularly important for the speech act of promising, since promises are self-referential. Two experiments that investigated children's understanding of promising are reported. In the first, 5- to 11-year-olds had to choose pictures to illustrate sen tences containing expressions of intention or promises; 5-year-olds did not distinguish between the speech act and the action predicated in the speech act. In the second experiment 6- to 10-year-olds had to answer questions following brief stories; 6-year-olds were less likely than older children to say that the promise is the reason for performing a promised action, and 6-year-olds were more likely to focus on events than on language in deciding whether a promise was kept or broken.