Children's understanding of the relation between referential knowledge and referential behavior

Young children often confuse what is said and meant in referential communication. This study determines exactly what is confused by kindergarten children, second graders, and fourth graders. In each of four experiments, a story listener's referential knowledge variously came from object details in the context and in an utterance, and children were asked independently to judge knowledge sufficiency for identifying one referent in a display, and whether the knowledge came from the utterance alone. In Experiments 1 and 2, experimenter identification of the correct referent was manipulated to determine if children confuse internal representations of information knowledge and referential behavior, or behavior and the real world referent, in determining the listerner's knowledge. In other experiments, the consistency of referential behavior with the correct referent was manipulated to determine the basis of children's knowledge assessments. Overall the results show that children's say-mean confusion varies depending on situational factors and variably reflects children's use of internal representations and external referential behavior in assessing knowledge.