How Toddlers and Preschoolers Learn to Uniquely Identify Referents for Others: A Training Study

Abstract

This training study investigates how children learn to refer to things unambiguously. Two hundred twenty-four children aged 2.6, 3.6, and 4.6 years were pre- and posttested for their ability to request stickers from a dense array. Between test sessions, children were assigned to a training condition in which they (a) asked for stickers from an adult, (b) responded to an adult's requests for stickers, (c) observed 1 adult ask another for stickers, or (d) heard model descriptions of stickers. All conditions yielded improvements in referring strategies, with condition (a) being most effective. Four-year-olds additionally demonstrated learning effects in a transfer task. These results suggest that young children's communication skills develop best in response to feedback about their own attempts at reference.

Referring expressions and structural language abilities in children with specific language impairment: A pragmatic tolerance account

“…Children typically develop adult-like abilities to spontaneously produce unambiguous referring expressions in simple contexts by approximately six years of age (Dickson, 1982;Girbau, 2001;Matthews, Lieven, & Tomasello, 2007). It has been suggested that their production of under-informative referring expressions prior to this age is due to a lack of awareness of other potential targets in the environment (Whitehurst, 1976) or because they don't realise that to refer means to implicitly describe differences that will eliminate potential ambiguity (Whitehurst & Sonnenschein, 1981).…”

Pronoun co-referencing errors: Challenges for generativist and usage-based accounts

“…An example hierarchy that summarises what might be learnt is that put forward by Gundel and colleagues (Gundel et al 1993;Gundel et al 2001). That children need to learn such properties of referring expressions is assumed to be uncontroversial, even if how this is achieved is currently a matter of debate (Matthews et al 2006;Matthews et al 2007). …”

7. Reference and Informativeness as cognitive processes in verbal communication

“…Beyond the scope of this chapter is the large literature on the development of reference which lends useful insights from children's use of overspecified reference to the current debate (e.g., Flavell et al 1981;Dickson 1982;Sonnenschein & Whitehurst 1984;Revelle et al 1985;Lloyd, Mann & Peers 1998;Matthews et al 2006Matthews et al , 2007Huang & Snedeker 2008;Davies & Katsos 2010;Nilsen & Graham 2012;Bannard, Klinger & Tomasello 2013;Morisseau, Davies & Matthews 2013). We expect that future endeavours will continue in tandem with these areas.…”