Many studies have examined when children are (in)competent in making appropriate referential choices based on their listeners' requirements. Traditionally, child-level social-cognitive abilities have been invoked in explaining the increasing sophistication of referential skills with age. However, recent research has generated interest in the contributions of interactive partners and motivations to the developmental process. This chapter presents and critically evaluates research emphasizing the influence of adult behavior and feedback on the development of children's referential skills. The first section reviews studies examining how children's skills improve by developing sensitivity to adults' verbal and non-verbal communicative cues. The second section reviews training studies that investigate how adult feedback affects children's improvement in referential communication. The third section provides some concluding remarks and future directions.

Pragmatic development involves learning to use linguistic code and nonlinguistic action in a well-integrated way in relation to an ongoing interaction. Given how different languages encode meaning distinctions differently and how different cultures might organize social interactions differently, comparative studies are crucially relevant for understanding pragmatic development. This chapter focuses on currently available crosslinguistic and crosscultural research about (1) nonverbal interaction, (2) referential communication, (3) speech acts and politeness, and (4) extended discourse such as conflicts. We also including a section on how children learning different languages are socialized to use language in varied ways by families, peers and schools. Future directions are suggested on the basis of this current research.

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