This study examines the flexibility with which children can use pragmatic information to determine word reference. Extensive previous research shows that children choose an unfamiliar object as referent of a novel name: the disambiguation effect. We added a pragmatic cue indirectly indicating a familiar object as intended referent. In three experiments, preschool children's ability to take this cue into account was specifically associated with false belief understanding and the ability to produce familiar alternative names (e.g., rabbit, animal) for a given referent. The association was predicted by the hypothesis that all three tasks require an understanding of perspective (linguistic or mental).The findings indicate that perspectival understanding is required to take into account indirect pragmatic information to suspend the disambiguation effect. Implications for lexical principles and socio-pragmatic theories of word learning are discussed.Keywords: word learning, mutual exclusivity bias, disambiguation effect, theory of mind, metacognition METACOGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTS IN WORD LEARNING 4 Metacognitive developments in word learning:Mutual Exclusivity and theory of mind A frequent observation, both in word learning research and in everyday life, is that young children appear to assume that each object kind has only one name. This tendency can be demonstrated experimentally using what is known as the disambiguation paradigm (e.g., Markman & Wachtel, 1988;Merriman & Bowman, 1989). In the presence of a familiar nameable object and an unfamiliar object children are asked to pick the referent of a novel name. For example, when shown a familiar apple, and an unfamiliar whisk, and asked to pick the "hinkle", children typically choose the novel object. This disambiguation effect is very robust and has been extensively used in research. It can be demonstrated from late infancy (e.g., Halberda, 2003;Markman, Wasow, & Hansen, 2003). It also constitutes a test case for differing theories about the nature of word learning, and about the relationship between word learning and metacognitive development. Determining the underlying cause of disambiguation is of broad theoretical importance.There are three general explanations of the phenomenon. (Others have proposed combinations of these explanations or hybrid accounts, e.g., Hollich, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2000a, but we focus on these three for brevity.) The phenomenon is frequently identified as the 'Mutual Exclusivity bias ' (e.g., Markman, 1989;Merriman & Bowman, 1989), based on the idea that children assume word extensions to be mutually exclusive.Other lexical principles accounts have been proposed in which children prefer to map novel names to nameless categories (N3C; Golinkoff, Mervis, & Hirsh-Pasek, 1994) or vice versa (bias to fill lexical gaps, Merriman & Bowman, 1989). Unlike the Mutual Exclusivity bias, neither account predicts difficulty mapping novel names to nameable categories if other options are not apparent. METACOGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTS IN WORD...

Jigsaw puzzles are ubiquitous developmental toys in Western societies, used here to examine the development of metarepresentation. For jigsaw puzzles this entails understanding that individual pieces, when assembled, produce a picture. In Experiment 1, 3-to 5-year-olds (N = 117) completed jigsaw puzzles that were normal, had no picture, or comprised noninterlocking rectangular pieces. Pictorial puzzle completion was associated with mental and graphical metarepresentational task performance. Guide pictures of completed pictorial puzzles were not useful. In Experiment 2, 3-to 4-year-olds (N = 52) completed a simplified task, to choose the correct final piece. Guide-use associated with age and specifically graphical metarepresentation performance. We conclude that the pragmatically natural measure of jigsaw puzzle completion ability demonstrates general and pictorial metarepresentational development at 4 years. We thank the children, parents and teachers of Kindergarten Radstadt, Kindergarten Eben, Edinburgh Park, Nursery, Psychology Kindergarten Stirling, and the University of East Anglia Nursery for their help and participation in this research. We also thank Dr. Debra Griffiths and Catherine Sayer for assistance in preparation of the manuscript, and the Editor and three anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on the manuscript during the review process.

Intervention in the early years can help to mitigate the risks that early language and communication difficulties pose for later learning and well-being. Critical to this is the capacity of early years educators to evaluate language development accurately in the classroom in order to target individual support effectively. This article reports on the development and testing of the Early Language in Play Settings (eLIPS) tool, an observational measure of child language. An action research model was used in the design of the tool with the result that the methodology adopted was compatible with an early years child-centered approach. Observations of children in play settings were used to gather information about early language through subscales measuring social communication, receptive and expressive language. A series of preliminary trials with 3-to 5-year-olds, established that the eLIPS measures have concurrent validity with scores from a standardized language assessment, the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool 2 UK. Investigation of internal consistency showed reliability for use by researchers and early years educators together with inter-rater reliability across these groups. It was concluded that eLIPS has potential as a tool to assist early years educators in understanding individual patterns of language acquisition in a play-based environment and for framing team discussions about approaches to early language support.

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