title: Young children create partner-specific referential pacts with peers.
abstract: In 2 studies, we investigated how peers establish a referential pact to call something, for example, a cushion versus a pillow (both equally felicitous). In Study 1, pairs of 4- and 6-year-old German-speaking peers established a referential pact for an artifact, for example, a woman's shoe, in a referential communication task. Six-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, continued to use these same expressions with the same partner (even when they were overinformative) but shifted to simpler expressions, for example, shoe, with a new partner. In Study 2, both age groups were successful in establishing such partner-specific referential pacts with a peer when using a proper name. These results suggest that even preschool children appreciate something of the conventional nature of linguistic expressions, with significant flexibility emerging between ages 4 and 6.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology.
authors.forename: Bahar
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Köymen
authors.affiliation: PädQUIS, Collaborative Institute of Freie Universität Berlin.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schmerse
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lieven
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tomasello
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011581:Psychological Tests