A New Look at Young Children's Referential Informativeness.

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Children's referential informativeness depends on shared knowledge, or common ground (CG).
• CG cues, like listener's gaze or prior mention, signal shared understanding between interlocutors.
• Understanding how children use CG cues is crucial for explaining language development.

Approach:

• Review of experimental evidence on 2- to 5-year-olds' linguistic referential informativeness.
• Proposal of a process model for how children use cues to common ground.
• Framing reference as active inference guided by Bayesian belief systems.

Key Points:

• Presence of CG cues leads to less informative language (e.g., pronouns).
• Absence of CG cues leads to more informative language (e.g., nouns).
• Sensitivity to linguistic CG cues emerges earlier (2.0 years) than nonlinguistic cues (2.5 years).

Conclusions:

• Child speakers act as generative models predicting shared mental states.
• Referential control serves to gather evidence for the existence of common ground.
• Beliefs about common ground, updated by environmental cues, guide efficient language production.