The relations between children's communicative perspective-taking and executive functioning
Date
2009-03
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
Two experiments investigated children's communicative perspective-taking ability. In Experiment 1, 4- to 5-year-old children were tested on two referential communication tasks, as well as on measures of inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Results document children's emergent use of the perspective of their speaking partner to guide their communicative behaviors in both a production and comprehension task. In Experiment 2, 3- to 4-year-old children used a speaker's perspective to guide their interpretation of instructions. In both experiments, egocentric interpretations of speaker requests were negatively correlated with children's inhibitory control skills. Results of these studies demonstrate that young children can differentiate between information that is accessible to the speaker versus privileged knowledge, and use this information to guide their communicative behaviors. Furthermore, the results suggest that children's inhibitory control skills allow them to inhibit their own perspective, enabling them to make use of their communicative partner's perspective.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Nilsen, E. S., & Graham, S. A. (2009). The relations between children's communicative perspective-taking and executive functioning. "Cognitive Psychology". 2009: 58. pp. 220-249. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2008.07.002