How children learn to produce appropriate referring expressions in narratives: the role of clarification requests and modeling

Barboza, Ana María Carmiol; Matthews, David; Rodríguez-Villagra, Odir Antonio

doi:10.1017/s0305000917000381

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…This is supported by another intervention study with preschoolers, which found that, although mothers' inferential yes/no questions and statements predicted children's receptive vocabulary growth over six months, mothers' inferential wh-questions did not (Tompkins, Bengochea, Nicol, & Justice, 2017). The authors suggest that since open-ended wh-questions (similar to those used in our study) do not provide the child with the correct information (in contrast to closed questions and statements), preschoolers may need inferences to be made more explicit for them to facilitate language development (see also Carmiol, Matthews, & Rodríguez-Villagra, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

Can inferencing be trained in preschoolers using shared book-reading? A randomised controlled trial of parents’ inference-eliciting questions on oral inferencing ability

et al. 2019

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The ability to make inferences is essential for effective language comprehension. While inferencing training benefits reading comprehension in school-aged children (see Elleman, 2017, for a review), we do not yet know whether it is beneficial to support the development of these skills prior to school entry. In a pre-registered randomised controlled trial, we evaluated the efficacy of a parent-delivered intervention intended to promote four-year-olds’ oral inferencing skills during shared book-reading. One hundred children from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds were randomly assigned to inferencing training or an active control condition of daily maths activities. The training was found to have no effect on inferencing. However, inferencing measures were highly correlated with children's baseline language ability. This suggests that a more effective approach to scaffolding inferencing in the preschool years might be to focus on promoting vocabulary to develop richer and stronger semantic networks.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

Can inferencing be trained in preschoolers using shared book-reading? A randomised controlled trial of parents’ inference-eliciting questions on oral inferencing ability

et al. 2019

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“…Although this focused perspective yielded conclusions summarized above, it neglected other research streams. For example, research on the effects of modeling suggests means by which children acquire strategies for reference (e.g., Carmiol et al, 2018; Matthews et al, 2007; Sarilar et al, 2015) and connects with their executive skills (e.g., Uzundag & Küntay, 2018). However, modeling manipulations do not implicate cues to CG about referents and so were not discussed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Look at Young Children’s Referential Informativeness

Vasil

2022

Perspect Psychol Sci

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In this article, I review experimental evidence for the dependence of 2- to 5-year-olds’ linguistic referential informativeness on cues to common ground (CG) and propose a process model. Cues to CG provide evidence for CG, that is, for the shared knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes of interlocutors. The presence of cues to CG (e.g., unimpeded listener line of regard or prior mention) is shown to be associated with less informative reference (e.g., pronouns). In contrast, the absence of cues to CG (e.g., impeded listener line of regard or new mention) is shown to be associated with more informative reference (e.g., nouns). Informativeness is sensitive to linguistic before nonlinguistic cues to CG (i.e., 2.0 vs. 2.5 years old, respectively). Reference is cast as a process of active inference, a formulation of Bayesian belief-guided control in biological systems. Child speakers are hierarchical generative models that, characteristically, expect sensory evidence for the evolved, prior Bayesian belief that interlocutor mental states are aligned (i.e., that CG exists). Referential control emerges as an embodied tool to gather evidence for this prior belief. Bottom-up cues to CG elicited by action drive updates to beliefs about CG. In turn, beliefs about CG guide efficient referential control.

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“…Several other studies explored the ways that children perceive and react to clarification requests at different stages of development (e.g., Anselmi et al, 1986;Bosco et al, 2006;Brinton et al, 1986;Carmiol et al, 2018; E. V. Clark & de Marneffe, 2012;Corrin, 2010;Forrester & Cherington, 2009;Gallagher, 1981;Lustigman & Clark, 2019;Wilcox & Webster, 1980). We refer readers to E. V. Clark (2020) for a more comprehensive overview on the role of clarification requests for language acquisition.…”

Section: Communicative Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%