Discussing those not present: comprehension of references to absent caregivers

The ability to understand references to the absent enables conversation to move beyond the here-and-now to matters distant in both space and time. Such understanding requires appreciating the relation between language and communicative intent: one must recognize speakers' intentions to use language to converge on a shared conversational focus that is at least somewhat independent of the current context. Despite its centrality to language development, the emergence of absent reference understanding has received little systematic attention. The present research investigated the responses of 60 infants aged 1;0 to 2 ; 6 to a researcher talking about both present and absent caregivers. When infants aged 1 ; 3 and older heard talk about absent caregivers they displayed a complex of nonverbal communicative responses that were divergent from their responses to talk about a present person. Infants aged 2 ; 0 and older provided responses indicating understanding of absent reference. The findings suggest that by 1 ; 3 infants may have at least a tacit appreciation of language as a device for coordinating conversational focus, and hint at increased sophistication in infants' absent reference comprehension skills at 2 ; 0.