title: Effects of target attributes on children's patterns of referential under- and over-specification.
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.
authors.affiliation: University of Alberta,Canada.
authors.forename: Monique
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Charest
authors.affiliation: University of British Columbia,Canada.
authors.forename: Judith R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Johnston
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D011340:Problem Solving; D014825:Vocabulary