title: That's not what you said earlier: preschoolers expect partners to be referentially consistent.
abstract: In a conversation, adults expect speakers to be consistent in their use of a particular expression. We examine whether four-year-olds expect speakers to use consistent referential descriptions and whether these expectations are partner-specific. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we presented four-year-olds with arrays of objects on a screen. During training, Experimenter 1 (E1) used a target expression to identify one object (i.e. "the spotted dog" to identify a dog that is both spotted and fluffy). Following training, either E1 or a new conversational partner (E2) presented children with test trials. Here, the target objects were referred to using either the original expression (e.g. "the spotted dog") or a new expression (e.g. "the fluffy dog"). Eye-movements indicated that preschoolers were quicker to identify the target referent when the original expression was used by the same speaker. This suggests that four-year-olds, like adults, expect communicative partners to adhere to referential pacts.
authors: University of Calgary.
authors: Susan A
authors: SA
authors: Graham
authors: University of Calgary.
authors: Julie
authors: J
authors: Sedivy
authors: University of Calgary.
authors: Melanie
authors: M
authors: Khu
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D002666:Psychology, Child; D013060:Speech