That's not what you said earlier: preschoolers expect partners to be referentially consistent
Date
2013-02
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Cambridge University Press
Abstract
In a conversation, adults expect speakers to be consistent in their use of a particular expression. We examine whether four-year-olds expect speakers to use consistent referential descriptions and whether these expectations are partner-specific. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we presented four-year-olds with arrays of objects on a screen. During training, Experimenter 1 (E1) used a target expression to identify one object (i.e. "the spotted dog" to identify a dog that is both spotted and fluffy). Following training, either E1 or a new conversational partner (E2) presented children with test trials. Here, the target objects were referred to using either the original expression (e.g. "the spotted dog") or a new expression (e.g. "the fluffy dog"). Eye-movements indicated that preschoolers were quicker to identify the target referent when the original expression was used by the same speaker. This suggests that four-year-olds, like adults, expect communicative partners to adhere to referential pacts.
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Citation
Graham, S. A., Sedivy, J., & Khu, M. (2013). Thats not what you said earlier: preschoolers expect partners to be referentially consistent. "Journal of Child Language", 41(1), 34–50. doi: 10.1017/s0305000912000530