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Effects of target attributes on children's patterns of referential under- and over-specification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2015

MONIQUE CHAREST  and
JUDITH R. JOHNSTON
MONIQUE CHAREST*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Canada
JUDITH R. JOHNSTON
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Canada
*
Address for correspondence: Monique Charest, University of Alberta, 8205 114 Street, 2–70 Corbett Hall, Edmonton Alberta T6G 2G4, Canada. e-mail: mcharest@ualberta.ca
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Abstract

We examined the effects of object attributes on children's descriptive patterns in a referential communication task. Thirty preschoolers described object pairs that were selected by the experimenter. The targets were defined by shared size or colour, and differed on the non-target dimension in half of the trials. The children also completed a non-verbal reasoning task with analogous stimuli. They selected objects after observing the experimenter make a choice and inferring the basis for selection. In the communication task, the children produced fewer size than colour descriptions, particularly when the size targets differed in colour. They also over-specified colour features more often than size. They did not show a similar challenge identifying size relationships in the non-verbal task. The results support the conclusion that target attributes have a systematic influence on children's referential performance. Potential mechanisms for these effects, and directions for future research are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , July 2016 , pp. 867 - 889
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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