Young Children Follow Pointing over Words in Interpreting Acts of Reference

Autor/inn/en	Grassmann, Susanne; Tomasello, Michael
Titel	Young Children Follow Pointing over Words in Interpreting Acts of Reference
Quelle	In: Developmental Science, 13 (2010) 1, S.252-263 (12 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1363-755X
DOI	10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00871.x
Schlagwörter	Young Children; Competition; Language Acquisition; Adults; Models; Sight Method; Teaching Methods + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Frühe Kindheit; Wettkampf; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Analogiemodell; Look-and-say method; Ganzheitsmethode; Teaching method; Lehrmethode; Unterrichtsmethode
Abstract	Adults refer young children's attention to things in two basic ways: through the use of pointing (and other deictic gestures) and words (and other linguistic conventions). In the current studies, we referred young children (2- and 4-year-olds) to things in conflicting ways, that is, by pointing to one object while indicating linguistically (in some way) a different object. In Study 1, a novel word was put into competition with a pointing gesture in a mutual exclusivity paradigm; that is, with a known and a novel object in front of the child, the adult pointed to the known object (e.g. a cup) while simultaneously requesting "the modi". In contrast to the findings of Jaswal and Hansen (2006), children followed almost exclusively the pointing gesture. In Study 2, when a known word was put into competition with a pointing gesture--the adult pointed to the novel object but requested "the car"--children still followed the pointing gesture. In Study 3, the referent of the pointing gesture was doubly contradicted by the lexical information--the adult pointed to a known object (e.g. a cup) but requested "the car"--in which case children considered pointing and lexical information equally strong. Together, these findings suggest that in disambiguating acts of reference, young children at both 2 and 4 years of age rely most heavily on pragmatic information (e.g. in a pointing gesture), and only secondarily on lexical conventions and principles. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10